Professional experience of CEOs in industry associations and corporate green innovation-empirical evidence from China

Abstract

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for how the professional experience of CEOs in industry associations impacts corporate green innovation, with data on the professional experience of CEOs in industry associations collected manually to perform an empirical analysis on the annual observation data of Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2021. The results show that there is a positive correlation between the professional experience of CEOs in industry associations and corporate green innovation, and this positive correlation is more significant in regions with higher levels of institutional development and enterprises with CEOs with professional experience in industry associations with higher administrative levels and CEOs with experience of green innovation. Tests of action mechanisms have further verified that the professional experience of CEOs in industry associations is conducive to shaping environmental awareness and ethics and alleviating perceived uncertainty of economic policies and financing restrictions, thus promoting green innovation activities among enterprises.