Institutional barriers to digital transformation in China’s renewable energy: Evidence from Ningxia

The digital transformation of the energy sector is vital to achieving carbon neutrality and sustainable development goals. In China, significant disparities in the adoption of these technologies persist across regions and enterprise types, yet the underlying institutional and organizational mechanisms remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by conducting a comparative case study of Ningxia's solar energy sector, grounded in an integrated Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) and Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theoretical framework. Based on semi-structured interviews, field observations, and policy analysis, the findings reveal divergent digital trajectories for large enterprises (LEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). LEs benefit from advanced capabilities, strong policy support, and organizational readiness, creating a virtuous cycle of adoption. In contrast, SMEs face a self-reinforcing socio-technical trap where high costs, limited skills, and unequal policy access create interconnected barriers. The study theorizes these findings into testable propositions and concludes that without differentiated policy instruments and targeted capacity-building, broad digitalization policies may unintentionally widen the existing digital divide. The findings contribute a nuanced, mechanism-based explanation of uneven informatization with implications for energy governance in developing and transition economies.