Digital sustainability: tackling climate change with bits and bytes

Recent studies suggest that firms can reduce their impact on the natural environment through the creative deployment of technologies that create, use, transmit, or source electronic data. While this work on digital sustainability is promising, so far it remained unclear how firms can leverage digital technologies as part of their sustainability management. We address this issue by providing an integrative picture of how to leverage digital technologies to tackle climate change across levels. We develop this picture in three steps. First, we argue for three key levels of sustainability management - the single firm, competitor and research organizations, and institutional actors. Second, we identify key functions that current digital technologies provide - (certified) measurement and information, motivation, and transaction - and assess key promises and downsides with respect to their potential to tackle climate change. Third, we develop a multi-level framework of digital sustainability enablers.