Can Media Attention Promote Green Innovation of Chinese Enterprises? Regulatory Effect of Environmental Regulation and Green Finance

Abstract

Under the green sustainable development strategy, media attention has played a vital role in promoting green innovation of enterprises. Nevertheless, existing research mainly analyzes how media attention affects enterprise innovation behavior, while ignoring the role of environmental regulation and green financial policy. The main purpose of this study is to explore whether the media’s attention to environmental issues can promote the enterprise’s green innovation, whether the constraint policies of environmental regulatory and incentive policy of green financial can play regulatory roles, and whether these effects are heterogeneous among different types of enterprises. Based on the data of Chinese A-shared listed enterprises from 2010 to 2019, this paper draws the following conclusions by constructing the fixed effect models: First, media attention promotes the substantive and strategic green innovation of enterprises. Second, environmental regulation and green finance have positive regulatory effects on media attention and enterprise green innovation, and these regulation effects have a more significant impact on promoting substantive green innovation. Third, media attention is more sensitive in heavy pollution and state-owned enterprises green innovation. The results of the robustness test still support the conclusion, indicating that the conclusions are reliable. The research of this paper helps to clarify the role of environmental regulation and green finance in media attention and green innovation on a deeper level and puts forward targeted suggestions on how to stimulate enterprise green innovation from the perspective of media, government, and enterprises.