As an important level in the administrative system, counties have abundant natural and agricultural resources and play a key role in promoting green development strategies. This article uses the entropy method to construct a comprehensive evaluation index system for green and low-carbon development from five dimensions: green innovation, green coordination, green efficiency, green openness, and green sharing. It uses econometric methods such as Moran’s index and kernel density estimation to empirically analyze the level of green and low-carbon development in Chinese counties, differentiation characteristics, and spatial effects. Furthermore, geographically weighted regression model is introduced to explore and analyze the driving factors of various variables on the differences of green development in Chinese counties. The study finds the following: From a temporal perspective, the overall level of green development in Chinese counties shows a fluctuating upward trend; From the perspective of spatial evolution, the green development of Chinese counties presents a regional distribution characteristic of “moderate distribution in west, high in the east and low in west”; The level of green development in counties has a significant spatial positive correlation. The driving factors of economic development level, green technology innovation, and government support mainly have a positive impact on the green development of Chinese counties, while the quality of human resources mainly has a negative impact. The research results emphasize that there is obvious spatial heterogeneity in the impact of each driving factor. By implementing differentiated green development strategies to alleviate resource and environmental problems between counties, deepening the concept of green and low-carbon development, optimizing the industrial layout structure of counties, and adhering to the strategy of innovation driven development, suggestions can help counties achieve sustainable development goals.

ABSTRACT Under the dual context of digital economy and green economy, it is imperative to examine the effects of digital-green policy synergy, represented by Broadband China Demonstration City policy and Low-Carbon City Pilot policy, on green innovation. Utilising panel data spanning from 2011 to 2021 across 279 prefecture-level cities in China, this research utilises a dual machine learning framework to evaluate multidimensional policy effects of digital-green policies on green innovation. The results demonstrate that: (1) digital-green policies markedly increase urban green innovation, with the synergistic effect of dual pilot policies being more pronounced than that of a single pilot policy; (2) digital-green policies promote green innovation by optimising economic structures and strengthening environmental regulations; (3) beneficial impact of digital-green policies on green innovation is more evident in eastern cities, non-resource-based cities, highly marketized cities, and cities with strong intellectual property protection. These conclusions provide theoretical insights and policy implications for fostering urban green innovation, considering policy synergy.

Research background: Amid global pressures to align digital transformation with environmental sustainability, big data policies have emerged as pivotal drivers of green innovation. These policies leverage advanced data analytics to foster eco-friendly technological advancements, yet their long-term impact on corporate innovation across diverse economic contexts remains underexplored. The potential of big data policies to transform environmental constraints into innovation opportunities underscores the need to examine their role in promoting sustainable development, particularly in rapidly digitizing economies. Purpose of the article: The study assesses the role of big data policies in promoting corporate green innovation—measured by green invention patent authorizations as quantity—and their contribution to sustainable technological advancements, utilizing innovation systems theory to rigorously investigate the diverse mechanisms influencing innovation performance in quantity, influence, quality, and diversity dimensions. Methods: Utilizing patent data from 4,728 Chinese listed firms in big data pilot and non-pilot regions to evaluate green innovation outcomes across quantity, influence, quality, and diversity. Using China’s National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones (NBDCPZ) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, it applies innovation systems theory to examine mechanisms—including financial channels, policy attention, and R&D incentives—while heterogeneity tests assess variations by firm ownership, innovation capacity, and regional economic conditions, with robustness ensured through placebo tests and instrumental variable approaches. Findings & value added: Findings reveal that the big data policy boosts green innovation quantity by 4.5%, driven by enhanced financing, subsidies, and reduced information asymmetry, with stronger effects in non-state-owned and high-innovation firms. However, its impact on influence, quality, and diversity is limited, suggesting a quantitative focus. The study advocates tax incentives and patent quality platforms to enhance transformative innovation. By illuminating data-driven pathways to sustainability, this research offers strategies for emerging economies and contributes to the global policy-innovation nexus, laying groundwork for future studies on technology-enabled green development.

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractThe growing pressure to operate sustainably has pushed many hotels in emerging markets, including Vietnam, to rethink how innovation and digital technology contribute to their financial performance. This study explores the extent to which a strategic focus on green innovation and the adoption of digital tools shape hotel financial outcomes, and whether these effects occur through the way environmental information is collected, managed, and used. Environmental leadership was also considered as a possible factor that might strengthen these relationships.A survey of 243 hotel managers in major Vietnamese cities provided the empirical basis for the analysis. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, the study finds that a clear strategic commitment to green innovation encourages hotels to engage more deeply in environmental information practices, particularly in proactive information gathering. This proactive behavior shows the strongest link with improved financial performance (β = 0.444, p < 0.001). By contrast, information transparency and formal reporting procedures produce weaker or inconsistent effects. The moderating influence of environmental leadership was not supported, implying that leadership and strategic orientation operate in parallel rather than amplifying one another.These results suggest that hotels benefit most when they actively seek and use environmental intelligence, rather than relying solely on compliance-oriented reporting systems. Proactive green information management appears to be the critical mechanism through which sustainability-focused strategies translate into financial gains.AcknowledgmentThe authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the participating hotels in Vietnam’s hospitality industry for their valuable cooperation and insights, which made this study possible. We also acknowledge the academic support provided by Faculty of Marketing, University of Finance – Marketing, and we are grateful to colleagues who offered constructive feedback during the development of this research.

ABSTRACT This research examined the impact of external patent agency capabilities on the generation of high-value green patents within China's electrochemical energy storage sector. It addressed a significant gap in understanding how these capabilities drive green innovation. The study aimed to analyse the direct effects of external patent agency capabilities on green patent outputs and explore the mediating roles of patent strategy and organisation. Data were collected from 295 professionals at Chinese electrochemical energy storage companies through a structured Likert-scale questionnaire. These professionals included patent managers, engineers, and analysts well-versed in patent agency operations. Analytical methods involved SPSS and Smart PLS-SEM, with structural equation modelling used to examine the relationships among patent agency capabilities, patent strategies, patent organisation, and green patent outputs. The findings indicated that external patent agency capabilities significantly enhance green patent production, with both patent strategy and organisational practices serving as crucial mediators. This study underscores the strategic importance of enhancing patent agency capabilities and aligning patent strategies and organisational practices to boost high-value green patent production, offering valuable theoretical insights for managing patents in green innovation within the Chinese context.

Constrained by resource endowment, the traditional cobalt supply chain model oriented towards efficiency maximization struggles to effectively respond to sudden risks such as supply disruptions. Therefore, enhancing cobalt supply chain resilience (CSCR) is becoming a critical issue for the sustainable development of the mineral industry sector. However, it remains unclear whether environmental regulation (ER) has an impact on CSCR. This study constructs a theoretical framework for analyzing the influence of ER on CSCR and employs econometric methods to conduct an empirical examination using a sample of 22 representative countries (regions) with accessible data. The research findings are as follows: (1) ER can significantly enhance CSCR, and this conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests. (2) ER functions through three channels: First, it drives green technological innovation and enhances the internal production capacity of the supply chain. Second, it guides the diversification of import sources and optimize the structure of the supply chain network. Third, it attracts high-quality foreign direct investment, leverage capital spillover effects, and enhance the vitality of the supply chain system. (3) Political stability plays a positive moderating role in the above process: A stable institutional environment can enhance the resilience dividend of ER. (4) the impact of ER is heterogeneous across different economic scales and the locations of supply chain. The research provides a new resilience theoretical perspective for understanding the relationship between environmental policies and resource security, and offers data support for coordinating ecological environment governance and stable mineral supply.

Corrigendum: Absorptive capacity and relationship learning mechanisms as complementary drivers of green innovation performance

ABSTRACT Driven by advancements in Industry 5.0, the shared manufacturing green innovation ecosystem (SharedMfg-GIE) has emerged as a novel paradigm that involves multi-platforms to provide customized matching. Concurrently, to avoid resource waste and monopolies, three-sided stable matching has become essential for ensuring precise matches. While previous literature focuses on supply–demand matching in isolated SharedMfg platforms that prioritize profitability, it often ignores sustainability and human well-being. This study proposed a novel three-sided stable matching model for SharedMfg-GIE. Firstly, owing to cognitive imprecision and reference dependence, hesitant fuzzy (HF) multiple reference points based on weak and strong composite indicators (MRP-WSCI) are presented for effective satisfaction evaluation. It creatively combines HF sets, achievement scalarizing function (ASF), and Kano, which offer greater advantages in expressing psychological disparity and attribute compensation relationship. On this basis, the matching model that consists of coupling coordination degree and matching state is established, which supports balanced synergy among matching parties. The proposed model is applied to the three-sided stable matching in Haier Sino-German Ecological Park. The results indicated that the average value of three-sided matching was 0.404, indicating relative adequacy of matching supply with demand. This study assists policymakers in formulating targeted strategies to optimize the ultra-flexible matching process.

ABSTRACT Drawing on the optimal distinctiveness theory and utilizing a sample of Chinese family listed firms spanning the period from 2009 to 2024, this study examined the impact of strategic corporate social responsibility on green innovation in family businesses. We found that, firstly, the implementation of strategic corporate social responsibility by family businesses is conducive to the development of green innovation. Secondly, policy-oriented and market-oriented media attention both strengthens the positive relationship between strategic CSR and family businesses’ green innovation under institutional legitimacy pressures, with policy-oriented media attention having a stronger moderating effect. Thirdly, mechanism tests reveal that strategic CSR promotes the green innovation development of family firms mainly by ‘external information transmission’ to obtain more external financing support, and by ‘strengthening internal governance’ to alleviate principal-agent problems and improve internal control levels. In addition, cross-sectional heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of strategic corporate social responsibility on green innovation is more significant in the stage of non-intergenerational succession, the manufacturing industry, and regions with a high degree of marketization. These findings provide implications for family businesses on how to seize development opportunities and successfully achieve green transformation and upgrading.

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between cost stickiness and green innovation. Using data from Chinese public firms spanning the period from 2009–2020, we find that cost stickiness negatively affects green innovation, indicating that firms with sticky costs are associated with fewer green innovation activities. Also, it explores the moderating impact of government subsidies on the relationship between cost stickiness and green innovation. The results highlight the crucial role of government subsidies in mitigating this negative impact. Specifically, firms that receive R&D and green subsidies can better cope with the adverse effects of increased cost stickiness for green innovation than firms that do not receive such subsidies. The results remain consistent after addressing potential endogeneity concerns. This study contributes to the understanding of how cost behaviour and government interventions influence green innovation, offering practical implications for corporate management, policymakers, and sustainability practices.

ABSTRACT As environmental regulations intensify and the demand for green transformation grows urgent, firms face critical choices in adopting innovation strategies to address institutional pressures and achieve sustainable development. This study investigates how command‐based and market‐based environmental regulations differentially affect symbolic and substantive green innovation, whereas exploring the moderating roles of top management's focused and divided green attention configurations. Drawing on institutional theory and the attention‐based view, we propose that command‐based regulation more strongly promotes symbolic green innovation, whereas market‐based regulation more effectively drives substantive green innovation, and that the two regulation types exert synergistic effects on both innovation dimensions. Data were collected from 352 Chinese firms through a time‐lagged survey design. The results show that command‐based regulation has a stronger positive effect on symbolic green innovation, whereas market‐based regulation more strongly boosts substantive green innovation. The two regulation types also display complementary synergistic effects in fostering both forms of green innovation. Furthermore, focused green attention strengthens the link between command‐based regulation and symbolic innovation but weakens its link to substantive innovation. In contrast, divided green attention enhances the effect of market‐based regulation on substantive innovation while reducing its impact on symbolic innovation. These findings enrich institutional theory and the attention‐based view by revealing heterogeneous regulatory mechanisms and the critical cognitive boundary conditions in the regulation‐innovation process. The study offers practical guidance for managers to align innovation strategies and attention allocation with regulatory contexts and for policymakers to design effective regulation mixes that promote genuine green transformation in firms.

ABSTRACT Drawing on the Resource‐Based View (RBV) and Stakeholder Theory, this study examines how green innovation contributes to firm value, emphasizing the mediating role of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and the moderating role of corporate reputation. Using panel data from 593 environmentally sensitive manufacturing firms across Asian economies between 2014 and 2023, the proposed relationships are tested with the Baron and Kenney mediation approach and IV‐2SLS estimation to address potential endogeneity. The results demonstrate that green innovation directly enhances firm value and significantly improves ESG performance. ESG performance itself exerts a positive effect on firm value, and mediation analysis reveals that ESG partially transmits the impact of green innovation on financial outcomes. Robustness checks strengthen these findings: The Variance Accounted For (VAF) ratio shows that 41.2% of the total effect of green innovation on firm value operates through ESG, while the Sobel test ( Z = 3.462, p < 0.001) and the Z ‐test of mediation ( Z = 3.291, p < 0.01) confirm the significance of the indirect pathway. These results provide consistent evidence that ESG is an important, though partial, channel linking innovation to value creation. Furthermore, corporate reputation is found to strengthen the effect of green innovation on firm value, suggesting that reputational capital amplifies the benefits of sustainability engagement. The study contributes to theory by integrating RBV and Stakeholder perspectives and offers practical insights for Asian manufacturing firms, where aligning innovation strategies with ESG improvements and reputation management is crucial for sustainable competitiveness.

This study empirically evaluates the influence of green intellectual capital, green innovation, and environmental management on green competitive advantage, with corporate environmental ethics as a moderating variable. The associative hypothesis-testing method was used on primary data from a survey, distributing questionnaires to all employees of 238 industrial companies and 30 industrial companies in Indonesia, using purposive sampling, and the data were analyzed using the SEM method in AMOS software. Achieving Green competitive advantage through environmentally conscious human resources, strong corporate ethics, green structural and relational capital management, and sustainable organizational culture, although integrated implementation, is still a challenge in Indonesia. This research implication Incorporates environmental ethics, cultivates sustainable human resources, executes sustainability strategies, and emphasises the triple bottom line to attain a green competitive advantage; furthermore, the government can facilitate this through incentives, regulations, and the promotion of environmental awareness.

Abstract This paper investigates how blockchain‐enabled empowerment alters consumer trust mechanisms regarding food greenness, consequently influencing supply chain decisions and modifying the effectiveness of government green subsidy policies. Specifically, we examine the moderating role of blockchain technology on the performance of two alternative government subsidy schemes (per‐unit and lump‐sum) within a green food supply chain. The results indicate that government subsidies significantly stimulate green innovation among the green food producer and generate downstream benefits. The size of the subsidy coefficient has a dual effect: It simultaneously shapes stakeholders’ preferences between subsidy schemes and acts as a key determinant of blockchain adoption decisions. Under the per‐unit subsidy, the extra revenue that a producer can obtain by misreporting green food output unintentionally becomes an implicit source of funding for quality investment, whereas the adoption of blockchain raises the likelihood that the lump‐sum subsidy will outperform the per‐unit subsidy. Furthermore, for the per‐unit subsidy, the e‐commerce platform as a retailer is more cost‐sensitive toward blockchain application compared to the producer. Lower blockchain implementation cost can improve food greenness and freshness while achieving a Pareto improvement in overall supply chain environmental performance and social welfare. However, when the green Research and Development (R&D) costs are excessively high, blockchain adoption can actually reduce both the environmental sustainability and market demand. These findings offer policymakers valuable insights into how to leverage the synergy between technological empowerment and institutional innovation.

Artificial intelligence innovation development pilot zone and enterprise green innovation: Evidence from China

With regard to mounting global environmental challenges and urgent demand for sustainable practices, there exists a struggle for food processing firms to adopt green innovation, given the sectors’ substantial contribution towards food waste and institutional challenges. Addressing this gap, the current study aims to examine the influence of green strategic orientation (GSO), green innovation (GI), and government support (GS) on the sustainable performance (SP) of the food processing sector in India, drawing on NRBV and Stakeholder theory. The present study considers the collective influence of green entrepreneurial orientation and green market orientation as key dimensions of green strategic orientation. Using stratified random sampling, the study collected data from 541 respondents during the period of March to June 2025 through a survey method. To enhance methodological rigor, the study employed structural equation modelling using SMART PLS along with discriminant analysis. The findings from discriminant analysis identifies effectiveness of each government support factor to distinguish varying levels of green innovation in the food processing sector. As per PLS-SEM observations, both dimensions exhibit significant influence on GI ( R 2 = 72.5%), while government support emerges as a strong predictor for SP, explaining 85.8% of its variance. These outcomes highlight the strategic importance of GEO, GMO, GI, and government support in transforming intangible resources into tangible sustainability outcomes, by offering actionable thoughts for policymakers and industry leaders to strengthen environmental resilience and long-term sustainability in the food sector.

ABSTRACT Using the issuance of a new regulation on economic responsibility audits in China in 2019 as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper investigates the role of economic responsibility audit in determining green innovation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). By employing a difference-in-differences model, we analyse the 20,471 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies over the period from 2016 to 2021. We find that SOEs enhance their level of green innovation by 12.87% more than non-SOEs in response to this policy intervention. The mechanism test results show that reducing agency cost and improving internal control quality are two potential pathways through which the economic responsibility audit promote SOEs’ green innovation. Moreover, cross-sectional analysis indicates that this positive effect is more pronounced in enterprises with high government innovation subsidies, high capital market attention, and large scale. Our results emphasize significant implications for facilitating green innovation and green development in SOEs.

ABSTRACT This study provides empirical evidence on how firms’ access to non-local green consumption demand causally affects their green innovation. We construct a city-level Green Market Access (GMA) indicator by combining provincial Baidu search intensity for eight categories of green products (e.g. new energy vehicles and energy-saving appliances), weighted by population or GDP, and adjusting for transportation costs based on intercity travel time derived from China’s national highway network. Using panel data on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2019, we find that GMA significantly increases green invention patent applications. This finding remains robust to alternative innovation measures, parameter sensitivity checks, and instrumental variable estimation. Mechanism tests indicate that GMA enhances corporate financial performance (by lowering selling expenses and raising cash flows) and strengthens environmental responsibility. The effect is more pronounced among state-owned enterprises, firms in lightly polluting industries, and those in developed regions. Overall, integrating geographically dispersed green consumption demand can stimulate corporate green innovation via improved financial performance and heightened environmental responsibility.

China faces the dual challenge of sustaining economic growth while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet the combined effects of energy structure, technological innovation, and land-use policies remain underexplored. This study examines the long- and short-run drivers of GHG emissions across Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2022 using second-generation panel estimators that address cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity (CS-ARDL, AMG, CCEMG). A unique contribution of this work is the joint inclusion of biomass energy use, fossil energy consumption, energy intensity, green technology innovation, and deforestation dynamics within a unified empirical framework. The results show that fossil fuel use and energy intensity significantly accelerate emissions, while innovation and afforestation policies help mitigate environmental pressures. Biomass energy increases emissions due to continued reliance on traditional rural combustion practices. These findings provide new empirical evidence to guide China’s transition toward clean energy, innovation-led growth, and strengthened forest-based carbon sinks in support of long-term decarbonization strategies.

Abstract With the motivation to explore China’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) toward a net zero emission future, we examine whether green technology innovation mitigates carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission thereby improving environmental quality across five of the most populous provinces (consisting of 85 cities) for the period between 2007 and 2019 in a multidimensional panel approach with an endogeneity robustness from two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM). The results show green technology innovation, economic output (GDP), and financial development spur CO 2 emission in the across the provinces. Meanwhile, especially in the whole panel, green technology innovation is dependent on the level of industrial structure (a moderation effect), but this interaction effect fails to show desirable outcome in the province-specific cases. Additionally, in each of Guangdong, Henan, Hunan, Shandong, and Sichuan provinces, carbon emission is triggered by an increase in GDP and financial development. Additionally, green technology innovation (i) worsens carbon emission through the moderating effect of advanced industrial structure and industrial structure rationalization in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces (ii) worsens carbon emission through the moderating effect of rationalization of industrial structure in Henan, Sichuan, and Shandong provinces. These findings have vital policy insight toward improving the quality of green innovations in China. Graphical Abstract