Under the background of the “dual-carbon” strategy, the carbon trading system, as an important tool of market-oriented environmental regulation, is profoundly changing corporate innovation behaviors and development models.

This paper constructs a quasi-natural experiment based on the official launch of China’s national carbon market in July 2021. Using a DID model and panel data from A-share listed companies in high-carbon industries between 2017 and 2023, it empirically examines the impact of the national carbon market on corporate digital innovation capabilities. The results show that the national carbon market significantly enhances corporate digital innovation capabilities. Specifically, it drives marked improvements in three interrelated key dimensions: digital open innovation capability (O-DICs), reflected by enterprises’ digital-economy-related patent counts; digital affordance innovation capability (A-DICs), measured by patents in key digital technology fields; and digital generative innovation capability (G-DICs), shown by the share of AI-related patents in enterprises’ total patent applications. Mechanism testing further identifies three primary transmission channels: strengthening mandatory carbon information disclosure requirements, which pushes enterprises to adopt digital tools for real-time carbon monitoring and systematic data management; boosting technological integration capacity by helping enterprises break single technical field constraints and expand patent knowledge coverage; and stimulating R&D investment expansion to support high-risk digital innovation. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy effect is more pronounced for enterprises with higher ESG ratings and those in regions without prior local carbon market pilots, highlighting the important moderating roles of internal governance quality and regional institutional foundations.

This paper contributes to the literature by extending the research on environmental regulation from traditional green innovation to the emerging field of digital innovation, identifying three specific transmission mechanisms, constructing a multidimensional measurement system for digital innovation capability, and providing nuanced policy implications based on heterogeneous effects. The conclusions underscore that the national carbon market serves not only as an essential policy tool for emission reduction, but also as a significant institutional driver for corporate digital transformation.