Zhiqiang Jia, Weian Li and Jian Xu
The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of customers' environmental concern on corporate green innovation and its underlying mechanisms.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of customers' environmental concern on corporate green innovation and its underlying mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
This study empirically examines the impact of customer environmental concern on corporate green innovation using 967 company-customer-year observations of Chinese A-share listed companies over the period 2012–2022.
Findings
The empirical results show that customer environmental concern significantly enhances corporate green innovation. Furthermore, executive environmental awareness and research and development (R&D) investment play a partial mediating role in this relationship. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that state-owned customers, customers located in the same province with the corporate and the intellectual property model cities contribute to strengthening this relationship. Moreover, corporate performance analysis shows that customer environmental concern can significantly increase corporate financial performance and sustainable performance.
Originality/value
This study innovatively proposes a measure of customer environmental concern and examines its impact on corporate green innovation and its underlying mechanisms. In addition, this study also proposes some insights for policymakers.
Details
Keywords
Tiantian Cao, Weian Li, Yaowei Zhang and Xingye Chen
This study aims to elucidate the causal relationship between corporate greenwashing and celebrity leaders.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to elucidate the causal relationship between corporate greenwashing and celebrity leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
This study considers winning the National Model Worker Award as an external shock for producing celebrity leaders and conducts a difference-in-difference (DID) estimation with listed companies from 2009 to 2022 in the Chinese context.
Findings
The findings indicate an increase in greenwashing of companies with celebrity leaders in the post-award period. Stakeholder pressure can moderate the effect of celebrity leaders on corporate greenwashing.
Originality/value
This study enriches the research on the antecedents of greenwashing and the impacts of celebrity leaders. The findings advance the understanding of the real effect of celebrity leaders on environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and provide new insights into how celebrities respond to legitimacy pressures.