Abstract:

The establishment and improvement of the minimum wage standard reflect the government's strong commitment to the legitimate rights and social equity of laborers. This article takes a perspective of factor substitution to empirically examine the impact of the minimum wage standard on the level of smart manufacturing in enterprises. The research findings indicate that the minimum wage standards have significantly enhanced the level of smart manufacturing in enterprises. Heterogeneous analysis reveals that factors such as labor intensity, human capital accumulation, financing difficulties exert varying degrees of influence on the incentive effect of minimum wage standards. Mechanism analysis suggests that the minimum wage standards primarily promote enterprise transformation towards smart manufacturing through three channels; increasing labor costs, influencing the demand structure for human capital within companies and improving the cost of regulation. From the perspective of enterprise smart manufacturing transformation, this article demonstrates that the minimum wage regulation not only contributes to technological advancement and industrial upgrading but also has positive spillover effects on achieving a fairer, more prosperous, and sustainable form of Chinese–style modernization.

Key words:

labor rights protection, intelligent transformation, factor substitution