The outstanding role of digitalisation and environmental protection in enhancing corporate competitiveness

This study aims to explore Hungarian industries and manufacturing branches demonstrating the highest air pollutant emission intensities, unifying digitalisation and environmental protection tools into comprehensive categories, and designating differentiating single attributes and categories of digitalisation and environmental protection regarding competitiveness. Few studies have explored the nexus between competitiveness, digitalisation, and environmental protection. This study applies the independent samples t-test, principal component analysis, and non-hierarchical cluster analysis. The critical industrial areas include energy supply, agriculture, and emission-intensive manufacturing branches (wood, paper, and printing; coke and refined petroleum products; chemicals and chemical products; rubber and plastic products; basic metals and fabricated metal products). More competitive and typically small- and mid-sized Hungarian companies are more intensely impacted by a shortage of qualified workforce, which impedes their innovation activities compared to less competitive firms. Additionally, the more competitive group outperforms the other group in both digitalisation and environmental protection. However, achieving better competitiveness does not necessitate a higher performance in any of the two fields within the more competitive group.