Abstract: The deep integration of digitization and greening creates possibilities for new quality productive forces. Previous studies mainly focus on the role of macro digital factors in corporate green transformation, but ignore the internal driving force of management’s digital strategy cognition. Taking A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2012 to 2023 as a sample and based on the theoretical framework of “cognition-attention-transformation”, this paper investigates the differential mediating role of environmental attention on the relationship between management’s digital strategy cognition and corporate green transformation from the combination perspective between upper echelons and attention-based view. The results show that: (1) The stronger strategic cognition a firm has toward digitalization, the better able it is to improve its total factor productivity and green innovation; (2) Compared with environmental attention centralization strategy that causes high operating costs initially, digital strategy, once cognized deeply, will motivate firms to adopt environmental attention decentralization strategy to search for diversified information and resources to improve their total factor productivity. However, in contrast to environmental attention decentralization strategy that brings about redundant information, digital strategy, once cognized deeply, will motivate firms to adopt an environmental attention centralization strategy to search for information resources in depth to make breakthroughs in digital technology, thus realizing green innovation. Itis essential to clarify the differential theoretical mechanisms of how management’s digital strategy cognition affects enterprises’ green transformation, and this not only helps to expand the existing literature on digitalization promoting enterprise green transformation, but also has theoretical and practical implications for pushing the formation and development of new quality productive forces.

Key words: new quality productive forces, digital strategy cognition, green transformation, environmental attention