Abstract
Against the backdrop of escalating global environmental challenges and mounting pressure from diverse stakeholders, understanding the pathways through which multi-agent green attention influences corporate green innovation has become critical. This paper uses the panel data of A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2013 to 2022, and constructs a dynamic structural equation model to analyze the paths of multi-objects’ green concern on the realization of enterprises’ green innovation. It is found that green concern subjects such as ESG disclosure, media attention and public attention outside the enterprise indirectly promote the green management innovation and green technology innovation of the enterprise by influencing the mediating variable of executives’ green cognition. Meanwhile, the green culture within the enterprise as a moderator variable significantly enhances the influence of executives’ green perceptions on the green management innovation of the enterprise. The study shows that executives of some listed manufacturing companies in China still have insufficient knowledge of green development, and the concept of sustainable development has not yet fully penetrated into the top management of enterprises. This study complements the theoretical framework for understanding the collective influence of multi-stakeholder environmental concerns on corporate green innovation, while providing a theoretical basis and practical guidance for advancing corporate green transformation.
Plain Language Summary
This paper uses the panel data of A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2013 to 2022, and constructs a dynamic structural equation model to analyze the paths of multi-objects’ green concern on the realization of enterprises’ green innovation. It is found that green concern subjects such as ESG disclosure, media attention and public attention outside the enterprise indirectly promote the green management innovation and green technology innovation of the enterprise by influencing the mediating variable of executives’ green cognition. Meanwhile, the green culture within the enterprise as a moderator variable significantly enhances the influence of executives’ green perceptions on the green management innovation of the enterprise. The study shows that executives of some listed manufacturing companies in China still have insufficient knowledge of green development, and the concept of sustainable development has not yet fully penetrated into the top management of enterprises. This study complements the theoretical framework for understanding the collective influence of multi-stakeholder environmental concerns on corporate green innovation, while providing a theoretical basis and practical guidance for advancing corporate green transformation.
Keywords
Introduction
Enterprise green innovation is the green development behavior of the society with enterprise as the organization carrier, it is a new type of enterprise behavior based on the responsibility of environmental protection and adherence to the principle of sustainable development, and it is also a direct embodiment of the enterprise’s social responsibility to maintain the peaceful development of mankind. With China’s introduction of a series of policies and measures related to energy saving and emission reduction, low carbon innovation, green environmental protection, enterprises as the specific implementer of its strategy, no longer only by the state and government departments concerned, more and more social subjects out of the national system and the development of the policy of the importance of the development of their own in the community, groups, organizations in the development of the demand for enterprises began to pay attention to the object, and different subjects often have different attributes of the enterprise with a green development behavior. Different subjects often have different attributes with their own inclination to the green perspective, thus forming a set of green concern system from the internal and external multi-body enterprises.
Based on the “stakeholder” theory and the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this paper adopts the panel data of A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2013 to 2022 to construct a dynamic structural equation model to find out the mediating conditions and moderating variables of the multiple green concern subjects that jointly influence the green innovation behavior of enterprises, and tries to ask the following questions. Mediating conditions and moderating variables, and attempts to address the following questions: first, which stakeholder subjects from within the firm mediate the impact of green concern from external subjects on firms’ green innovation behavior? Second, are there other pressures from within the firm that indirectly influence this mediating effect?
Literature Review
In terms of the pressure of concern from outside the enterprise, in August 2016, seven ministries and commissions, namely the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the Ministry of Finance (MOF), the Development and Reform Commission (DRC), the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), the Securities Regulatory Commission (SFC), and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), jointly issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Construction of a Green Financial System,” which proposes that a mandatory environmental information disclosure system for listed companies and debt-issuing enterprises should be “gradually established and improved.” In December 2021, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China (MEE) issued the Administrative Measures for the Legal Disclosure of Environmental Information of Enterprises, a regulation marking China’s formal definition of the scope of subject matter, timing of disclosure, and disclosure content of listed companies with respect to ESG information disclosure. A month later, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the Guidelines for the Legal Disclosure of Corporate Environmental Information, which further clarified the format for the preparation of annual ESG information disclosure reports and interim reports and ensured the standardization of the reports 2022. In April 2012, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued the Guidelines for the Management of Investor Relationships of Listed Companies, which on the basis of enriching and expanding the content and methods of investor relationship management, implemented the requirements of the new development concept and added the relevant requirements of ESG information disclosure of listed companies in the communication content. From this, we can see that the government’s green concern for enterprises is often reflected in the form of policies, and is typically represented by the green concern at the institutional level from the perspective of ESG information disclosure (Guo et al., 2023; Xie et al., 2023).
From an unofficial social perspective, the media, as an important carrier of information dissemination between enterprises and society, will pay more attention to the actions of enterprises in the field of green innovation as the green atmosphere of the society gradually strengthens due to its ability to capture information. By reporting on these actions, the media can not only enhance the transparency of corporate information, thereby alleviating the information asymmetry between the company and various stakeholders, but also help to enhance the reputation of the company and shape its positive public image. In summary, corporate initiatives in green innovation tend to attract a high degree of media attention, which in turn will have an impact on corporate behavior and ultimately play an important role in the market value of the company. Similarly, the general public at the social level will also pay attention to whether a series of behaviors of enterprises meet the national expectations and provide more opportunities for their own development in the society out of their own interests and feedback on national policy propaganda. The public is an important driver of China’s green development, and it has been found that the public’s attention to the environment can promote enterprises’ green technological innovation through both formal and informal institutional channels (S. Wang et al., 2024; Xiao et al., 2024). Therefore, the green concern at the social level, which consists of public attention and media attention, will also play an influential role in the green innovation of enterprises.
In terms of the pressure of attention within the enterprise, a series of people who are closely associated with the interests of the enterprise, such as employees within the enterprise, organizational leaders, shareholders of the enterprise and other individuals in the capacity of the enterprise, will pay more attention to the green innovation of the enterprise due to their own interests related to the enterprise, and this influence often occurs internally, and is the influence of the individual diffusion to the whole, that is, the attention of the perspective affects more of the enterprise’s internal employee behavior, which in turn affects the overall green behavior of the enterprise upwards (S. Cao et al., 2024; Jin et al., 2024). And the stakeholders, after a long time of interest fitting, lead the innovation atmosphere of the enterprise, and make the enterprise accumulate experience over time, and finally form their own internal enterprise culture. It is not difficult to see that, under the internal perspective, the enterprise green culture formed by the enterprise after a long period of concern fitting of each stakeholder will further influence the enterprise green innovation.
Since 1987, when the concept of “sustainable development” was first proposed by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), management thinking based on the concept of sustainable development has become the focus of extensive attention in the business and academic communities. In the context of the universal pursuit of green ecological development, the enterprise as an economic subject, its innovative behavior and environmental protection image will always be concerned by the individuals of the society, the enterprise’s green reform is imminent, the enterprise must make green innovation performance to change itself, to adapt to the development of the times. As the sustainable development issues are constantly raised, the importance of green development has been increasing, and the stakeholders not only pay attention to the economic output of the enterprise, but also focus on the green innovation behavior of the enterprise (L. Li et al., 2024; M. Liu et al., 2024).
In order to realize the goal of sustainable development of enterprises and win the long-term competitive advantage, the success or failure of green innovation of enterprises has become the inevitable reform of the current enterprise development. In this 100 years of unprecedented changes in the node of time, the state through the formulation of the correct strategy to guide the development of society, and enterprises and different individuals in society, as an important implementation of the national strategy and supervision of the party, the full implementation of their respective social responsibilities, quite the formation of the main body of the community to focus on the development of enterprises with a green perspective, while the enterprise in the green atmosphere of vigorous innovation, standardize the behavior of the virtuous cycle of the trend (D. Cao & Yu, 2023; X. Zhang et al., 2023). Therefore, only by really clarifying the realization mechanism of multi-body green concern on enterprise green innovation path can we better explain the reasons for the results of the path, and make enterprises use their own resources in a more targeted way, improve the efficiency of their green output, and shorten the development time while ensuring the degree of goal achievement.
Research has predominantly focused on the influence of individual factors—such as ESG performance or media attention—on corporate green innovation (S. Cao et al., 2024; X. Li et al., 2023). However, these studies often overlook the potential mediating variables that can concurrently channel the effects of diverse external stimuli on green innovation behavior from a multi-agent perspective. While such singular approaches have uncovered numerous mediating conditions and enriched the diversity of green innovation research, they fall short in supporting corporate resource integration. As a result, firms struggle to leverage minimal cost for maximal returns, ultimately leading to resource inefficiency. Furthermore, the widespread use of cross-sectional data in existing literature tends to yield transient findings, neglecting the dynamic evolution of corporate behavior as the broader business environment changes.
This paper emphasizes the combined effects of multiple external agents and proposes that investigating the pathway to corporate green innovation requires careful consideration of how such multi-agent influences evolve over time. By incorporating temporal dynamics, we offer a more integrated and sustainable analytical framework, which constitutes a key novelty of our study.
Theoretical Analysis and Research Hypotheses
To elucidate the pathway through which multi-agent green attention influences corporate green innovation, this study integrates the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model with stakeholder theory. The S-O-R model, addresses the limitations of the traditional Stimulus-Response (S-R) paradigm by introducing the “Organism” as a mediating mechanism. This “Organism” represents an individual’s internal state, positing that external stimuli do not directly trigger responses but are instead filtered and processed through internal factors such as cognition, motivation, and emotion.
In the context of our research, external pressures from diverse stakeholders (the Stimulus) shape the internal cognitive and cultural landscape of the firm (the Organism), which in turn drives the decision to engage in green innovation (the Response). This framework is complemented by stakeholder theory, which asserts that a firm’s success and strategic decisions are shaped by balancing the interests of all entities that affect or are affected by it, not just shareholders.
Figure 1 presents our conceptual model, which visually articulates these connections.
S-O-R framework.
While existing literature confirms that multi-agent green concern can stimulate green innovation, the S-O-R model necessitates a mediating “Organism” to explain the path from stimulus to response. Prior research provides fragmented evidence supporting this. On one hand, external pressures, such as government environmental taxes and regulations, have been shown to promote corporate green investment (Guo et al., 2023). On the other hand, internal conditions are equally critical. Studies indicate that factors like employee attitudes, leadership styles, and managers’ personal traits significantly influence the adoption and implementation of green strategies (B. Li et al., 2024).
This aligns with stakeholder theory, which suggests that internal stakeholders exert significant pressure. For Chinese firms, this internal pressure stems from organizational capabilities and managerial characteristics (M. Liu et al., 2024). The executive team, wielding strategic decision-making power, is particularly pivotal. Their environmental awareness and cognitive attitudes are crucial for formulating and enacting green innovation strategies (D. Cao & Yu, 2023; X. Zhang et al., 2023). Simultaneously, the corporate culture acts as an internal stimulus. A strong green culture can enhance employee cohesion and motivation, guiding behavior consistently with environmental values and indirectly influencing the executive team’s strategic choices.
Therefore, this study synthesizes these perspectives to propose that external pressures (ESG, media, public) are not direct drivers. Instead, they are channeled through the concerns and perceptions of internal stakeholders. Specifically, these external stimuli heighten internal awareness, which manifests in two key mediating states: (a) increased green perception within the executive team, and (b) the strengthening of a corporate green culture. These internal states, in turn, directly motivate the firm’s green innovation behavior. Concurrently, internal pressures from executive green perception and corporate green culture also reinforce and interact with the external stakeholder environment, creating a feedback loop that ultimately promotes the emergence of corporate green innovation.
The Mediating Role of Executive Green Perceptions
Leaders as the soul of the enterprise survival and development direction, its strategic goals for the organization, the direction of development, the means of implementation, etc. have the right to participate directly, and some of the enterprise’s executive team even has the right to decide or veto the whole decision. Early scholars have pointed out that the executive team, as an important decision-making force in the process of enterprise management, plays a pivotal role in the process of strategic decision-making and decision-making implementation, and its degree of concern for environmental issues and cognitive attitude is a key factor in the formulation and implementation of green innovation strategy of enterprises. Especially in the post-epidemic era, China is gradually restoring the prosperity of the rapid development period, and development and environmental protection is bound to have an inevitable contradiction. Especially for manufacturing enterprises, resource constraints and environmental pollution double pressure on the traditional manufacturing enterprises caused by the crude economic growth is difficult to maintain. In this context, in order to maximize the balance between rapid economic recovery and environmental pollution, the level of green awareness of executives is a source of internal pressure that we need to focus on. Therefore, executives’ green cognition will surely become a key means to promote green transformation and green development of enterprises (Wu et al., 2024).
Executive green cognition refers to the perception and scientific knowledge of the resource environment formed by the enterprise executives through the understanding of the resource environment, as well as the psychological experience when they undertake the obligation to conserve resources and protect the environment (Hao et al., 2025), and its specific content may include the executive team’s cognition of the green competitive advantage, the awareness of social responsibility, and the perception of external pressure and other factors. In particular, the pressure of external subject’s attention, from time to time, will passively force the corporate leadership to improve their own level of green cognition. It can be seen that executive green cognition is the perception and interpretation of resource and environmental issues formed by business leaders after receiving external information pressure and combining with their own knowledge structure and values. In turn, this cognition will directly affect the organization’s behavioral choices and performance level, and the difference in managers’ perception of the same environmental problem will lead to different organizational environmental behaviors. Also, because green innovation behavior has the characteristics of high input, high risk and long return on investment cycle, it often does not have the priority of allocation in terms of resources and capabilities (Y. Liu & Chen, 2024). Executives, as the controller of enterprise resources and capabilities, whether they are willing to use the organizational resources for green innovation depends on their cognition and interpretation of environmental protection. It is not difficult to see that the higher the level of managers’ green cognition, the better the corporate environmental performance.
Therefore, this paper argues that executives’ green perceptions mediate the realization of firms’ green innovations in response to green concerns of external agents.
ESG and Executive Green Perceptions
The new ESG disclosure system is a concrete manifestation of the government’s green concern for enterprises, and it is the inevitable product of the government’s green concern development toward the mature stage. ESG is a sustainable development concept that takes into account the coordinated development of the environment, society and governance, which is highly compatible with the concept of green development, and it has become an important tool for evaluating the level of green development of enterprises, and optimizing the communication between the enterprises and their stakeholders. As the decision makers of enterprises, senior managers will take into account the pressure from the external environment and the concerns of stakeholders before making long-term development strategies. Among them, the government as the existence of national authority, the requirements of a series of systems and policies formulated by the government will be regarded as an important indicator for consideration by executives (Tu et al., 2024), and improve the green awareness of executives. And the stronger the level of green awareness of executives, the more they tend to integrate ESG principles into the long-term strategy and daily operation of the organization, promoting the implementation of green development strategies, increasing green production capacity and promoting green innovation. For example, decision makers will reduce the negative impact of the enterprise on the environment by adopting clean energy, improving production processes, and reducing waste emissions, so that the organization can obtain a higher ESG rating. At the same time, enterprises are also able to better identify and utilize new market opportunities, develop and promote green products and services, and satisfy society’s demand for environmental protection and sustainable development by improving their green performance (Wu et al., 2024).
Therefore, this study argues that ESG will promote corporate green innovation behavior by directly influencing the level of executives’ green perceptions. Further, the research hypotheses are proposed:
Media Attention and Executive Green Perceptions
Media attention is an important means of social supervision on the development and operation of enterprises, and it is a practical manifestation of the green concern of enterprises at the social level. The media, as the main body of information collection and release, can expose the enterprise behavior more transparently to the supervision of various stakeholders through a variety of ways, such as information dissemination, public opinion evaluation, and interview communication (Hao et al., 2024). The media’s power to pay attention to the enterprise can alleviate the problem of information asymmetry between the society and the enterprise, and at the same time, through the reputation mechanism and the punishment mechanism, it can play a role in restraining the opportunistic behavior of the employees, leaders and other people within the company, and then influence the way of thinking of the executives to make decisions. It can be seen that media attention will play a decisive role in whether the enterprise will establish a good social image and have an upward social reputation. The reputation of the company is an important consideration in executive decision-making (Ma et al., 2023), and the executive team must improve the reputation of the company by developing a strategic approach that is recognized by society and meets the needs of stakeholders, in order to gain more competitive advantages (Hu et al., 2024). It can be seen that pressures and threats from the external environment affect individuals’ perceptions and behaviors, and environmental pressures from media attention also affect the executive team’s decision-making style when penetrating into the company’s interior, and contribute to the company’s green development.
Therefore, this study argues that media attention directly affects the level of executives’ green perceptions and, in doing so, promotes corporate green innovation behavior. Further, the research hypothesis is proposed:
Public Concerns and Executive Green Perceptions
As mentioned before, some of the public with higher green cognition and stronger sense of civic mission will spontaneously obtain information about the relevant enterprises they are interested in through the Internet, magazines, newspapers and other means of collection, subjectively and actively, and give corresponding opinions (Ding et al., 2023). Different from media attention, public attention pays more attention to the evaluation of information and has a higher level of concern groups. On the one hand, after the public found the environmental problems of enterprises, they can urge the government to carry out more stringent supervision through letters, visits, telephone calls and other means, and prompt the enterprise leaders to reduce the social violations from the decision-making level through the power of the official; on the other hand, the public opinion and the product preference conveyed by the public can prompt the enterprises to change the production and management concepts, and to change the attitude toward the implementation of the concept of green development (Y. Chen et al., 2024). It is not difficult to see that the public, as a stakeholder closely linked to the enterprise, its evaluation of the enterprise’s attitude, such as evaluation of word-of-mouth, purchasing behavior, etc., will be directly related to the actual interests of the enterprise, and even determine the survival of the enterprise. As a result, company executives have to take the public’s attention to the organization into account in the management process of the company, fully consider the public’s evaluation, adjust their own cognition, make decisions that are more in line with the company’s long-term development, and improve the green output of the company.
Therefore, this study argues that pressure from public concern will stimulate company executives to improve their cognitive level, make operational decisions that are more in line with the public opinion and in this way increase green innovation in the company. This leads to the research hypothesis:
The Moderating Role of Corporate Green Culture
Enterprise Green Culture and Enterprise Green Innovation
According to the research in the first half of this paper, it is known that corporate culture is the beliefs, values and behavioral norms formed by the enterprise for a long time, reflecting the organization’s identity, common goals and common values (Ye et al., 2024), and the corporate culture of “gathering people’s hearts and minds internally and shaping the image externally” is the inner gene of the enterprise that responds to the environmental changes, ensures the implementation of management practices, and forms the competitive advantages. The corporate culture is the internal gene of the enterprise to respond to environmental changes, ensure management practices, and form competitive advantages. Thus, although corporate culture is not a formal management system and cannot officially intervene in corporate behavioral outputs by administrative means, its long-term and cumulative cultural atmosphere will infect every person within the enterprise and strongly influence his or her values and identity. The formation of green enterprise culture will greatly promote the implementation of the concept of environmental protection within the enterprise. First of all, green culture can effectively enhance the environmental cohesion and centripetal force of enterprises, which through the penetration of cultural values within the enterprise, subconsciously cultivate the environmental awareness of employees; secondly, green culture through the development of institutional norms and responsibility requirements, to establish a certain constraints within the enterprise; finally, the green culture is also an important impetus to promote enterprise innovation and economic development, with a stronger green Finally, green culture is also an important driving force for enterprise innovation and economic development, and enterprises with a stronger green culture usually pay more attention to improving their own environmental performance.
It can be seen that the formation of corporate green culture is also inextricably linked to corporate green innovation. Although it is an informal system that cannot directly influence corporate strategy and determine green performance output like executive decision-making, it can indirectly contribute to corporate green innovation by inculcating people’s minds and hearts.
Executive Green Perception and Corporate Green Culture
The executive team as the mainstay of the enterprise, its decision-making power can directly play a role in the formulation of enterprise development strategy, and the choice of executive decision-making, to a large extent, will be affected by the pressure from the external environment of the concern of multiple subjects. Similarly, the formation of corporate green culture is also inseparable from the pressure of the external environment. As the saying goes, “three feet of ice is not cold in one day,” the formation of enterprise green culture is not overnight, but in the long years of external attention of different subjects under the stimulation of the collective beliefs and shared values. With the external environment of the enterprise will change over time is different, this kind of cultural identity, but the formation of a long time stability, only subtle transformation, but not a large degree of change (Y. S. Chen et al., 2023). Therefore, although the concept of corporate green culture has similarities with the concern stimulation of external subjects, there may still be some discrepancies. And when making decisions, company leaders should not only conform to the current multi-stakeholder concern pressure, but also consider the binding effect of corporate green culture on their own behavior. In other words, this study argues that the role of executives’ green perceptions on corporate green innovation is equally affected by the ripple effect of corporate green culture in addition to the influence of multi-stakeholder green concerns.
Based on the above, this paper proposes a research hypothesis based on the link between executive green cognition, corporate green culture and corporate green innovation:
Research Design
Variable Definition and Measurement
Explanatory Variable
Corporate Green Technology Innovation (GTI)
Green technological innovation refers to the innovative behavior of enterprises in the already mastered core resources based on a series of exploration of new fields through new research and development, enhancement of arithmetic, use of new raw materials, and the formation of new technological means (Zeng et al., 2023). Compared with traditional technological innovation, green technological innovation pays more attention to the optimization of enterprises in all aspects of research and development, raw material procurement, production and manufacturing, transportation and sales, as well as product use, and seeks to use clean technology, green technology and environmentally friendly materials at each stage in order to minimize the consumption of resources and energy, as well as reduce environmental pollution and emissions. Drawing on B. Li et al., 2024, the measurement of green technological innovation is expressed as the natural logarithm of the number of green patent applications of a company in the current period plus one.
Corporate Green Management Innovation (GMI)
Green management innovation refers to the use of existing core resources by enterprises to improve their green output through the implementation of more environmentally friendly means of distribution, the construction of more efficient operational structures and the reorganization of internal resources with more environmentally friendly corporate systems. Some studies have shown that the ISO 14001 certification system provides assistance to organizations wishing to establish, implement, maintain and improve their environmental management, and has been adopted by an increasing number of enterprises and has gained high visibility worldwide, becoming the most recognized environmental management certification system. Therefore, this study measures green management innovation based on whether or not a company is ISO 14001 certified for that year (Sun et al., 2025).
Explanatory Variable
ESG
This study adopts the annual ESG scores of firms in the ESG rating indicators of the CSI database to measure corporate ESG performance. The reason for choosing the CSI database is that the ESG indicator system in the database benchmarks the mainstream ESG evaluation frameworks abroad and combines with the realities of China’s capital market, setting up 14 themes, 26 key indicators and more than 130 sub-indicators under the three pillars of environment, society and corporate governance, whereas other ESG evaluation systems are mostly characterized by the shortcomings of having a narrower scope of coverage and a lower frequency of updating.
Media
Media attention refers to the social media’s reporting on a series of developmental behaviors of a company through its own communication role in the company’s environmental performance and social response, and in this way, it generates social opinion pressure on the company, forcing the company to make adjustments to reduce reputational losses. This study adopts the method of taking the natural logarithm of the number of listed companies’ media reports (newspaper + internet) plus one from the listed companies’ financial news database (CFND) of the China Research Data Service Platform (CNRDS) to measure the number of media reports (newspaper + internet) of listed companies, and the larger the value represents the higher the degree of media attention. This measurement is also the most widely accepted and frequently used method in the academic world (S. Wang et al., 2024; S. P. Zhang et al., 2025).
Public
Public attention refers to the fact that the people will take the identity of enterprise stakeholders, subjectively and actively through the network, books, authoritative speakers and other channels to obtain enterprise-related development behavior, and to form evaluation word-of-mouth. Public attention reflects the attention of the public on issues such as environmental protection and pollution control (B. Wang & Shen, 2025). With the progress of the times, the Internet platform has become a key tool for information acquisition and exchange, as well as a major channel for the public to express their demands and participate in social governance. Therefore, this study uses the Baidu index of residents’ searches for specific environmental keywords to measure public concern indicators. The reason for using the Baidu search index is that with the withdrawal of Google from the mainland China market in March 2010, the use of the Baidu search engine has maintained a perennial market share of more than 70% in mainland China, making it the largest search platform in the country.
Intermediary Variable
Executive Green Cognition (EGC)
Executive green cognition is a collective term for executives’ perception of the external environment formed through their understanding of the resource environment, their own scientific knowledge, and their psychological experience when assuming the obligation to conserve resources and protect the environment. Some scholars’ studies have pointed out that compared with questionnaires, textual analysis is more effective in measuring executives’ perceptions and can be used for longitudinal data research. Therefore, this paper refers to the practice of Abbas (2024), selects a series of keywords based on the three dimensions of green competitive advantage cognition, corporate social responsibility cognition, and external environmental pressure perception, and uses the python crawler function to organize the corporate annual reports of all the target enterprises from 2013 to 2022 as a data pool, and measures the green cognition of the corporate executives by analyzing the frequency of keywords appearing in the data pool.
Keyword frequency is considered an appropriate proxy for executive cognition and organizational attention because language use in official corporate documents reflects the strategic focus and interpretive frameworks of top management. When executives prioritize green innovation and environmental responsibility, such emphasis tends to be linguistically manifested in key disclosures like annual reports. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the potential issue of symbolic disclosure—where firms may communicate green engagement without corresponding substantive actions. To mitigate this bias, our keyword selection was deliberately aligned with concrete green innovation activities and strategic environmental commitments, reducing the emphasis on generic or ceremonial statements. Additionally, the longitudinal design of the study allows for tracking consistency in green terminology over time, which helps distinguish between temporary symbolic gestures and sustained cognitive emphasis.
Moderator Variable
Enterprise Green Culture (Culture)
Enterprise green culture refers to the aggregation of individual concepts and behavioral standards in the enterprise, which not only reflects the cultural values of the entire enterprise, but also profoundly affects a series of operational processes in the enterprise, and is an important internal factor that can promote the green behavior of the enterprise. The traditional way of measuring the green culture of enterprises mainly focuses on the questionnaire analysis method. Although this method is effective, it also has shortcomings caused by the low estimation accuracy of cross-sectional data and the lack of time dimension. In order to solve this problem, this study collects and organizes the CSR reports of all target enterprises from 2013 to 2022 as a data pool through the python crawler function, and at the same time selects several keywords from the three aspects of green propaganda, green concept, and green spirit to form a dictionary of green culture of the enterprise, and then applies the computer’s natural language After that, computerized natural language processing technology is applied to count the frequency of each keyword in the data pool, and the natural logarithm of the word frequency plus 1 is used to measure the level of corporate green culture.
Sample Selection and Data Sources
This study uses A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2013 to 2022 as the original sample. Meanwhile, in order to ensure the validity and rigor of the data, the following treatments are applied to the data: (a) the samples of ST and *ST companies are excluded; (b) the samples with missing data and anomalies in each variable are excluded; (c) the samples with gearing ratios greater than 1 are excluded; and (d) the samples are subjected to the upper and lower 1% Winsorize treatment in order to avoid the influence of extreme values. A total of 4,648 valid observations covering 542 companies are finally obtained after the above four steps of rectification.
In this study, the green patent application data used to measure corporate green technological innovation (GTI) comes from the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and WIPO Green Patent Inventory; the ISO 14001 certification data used to measure corporate green management innovation (GMI) comes from the Listed Company Disclosure of Environmental Regulation and Certification (LCLERC) table in the database of the Cathay Pacific (CSMAR); the corporate ESG disclosure (ESG) data used to measure ESG information (ESG) from the CSI ESG database; Media from the China Financial News Database (CFND) of listed companies on the China Research Data Service Platform (CNRDS); and Public from the Baidu Platform Search Index. With some changes, the data used to measure Executive Green Cognition (EGC) comes from manually searching corporate annual reports, and the data used to measure Corporate Green Culture (Culture) comes from Juchao Information Network.
Model Building
Based on the above analysis and research hypotheses, this paper takes dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) as the research method, and combines the “dual innovation” theory and the “stakeholder” theory with the “stimulus-organism-response” theory S-O-R model under the framework of “stimulus-organism-response” theory. DSEM surpasses conventional SEM and panel regressions by explicitly modeling temporal dynamics. It accounts for endogeneity by separating within- and between-person variance, effectively controlling for unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity. Furthermore, DSEM uniquely captures reciprocal dynamic feedback loops, where variables mutually influence each other over time, a key capability that conventional methods lack. Under the framework of S-O-R model of “stimulus-organism-response” theory, combining with “dual innovation” theory and “stakeholder” theory, the following research model is constructed by using panel data from the dimensions of green management innovation which represents the “utilization” innovation of the enterprise and green technological innovation which represents the “exploratory” innovation of the enterprise, in order to The following research model was constructed using panel data to verify the mediating role of executives’ green cognition and the moderating role of corporate green culture. The specific model is constructed as in Figures 2 and 3.
Structural equation modeling setup 1 (GMI).
Structural equation modeling setup 2 (GTI).
Findings and Analysis
Descriptive Statistics
The descriptive statistics of each variable are shown in Table 1. It can be seen that the maximum value of executives’ green cognition is 98, the minimum value is 0, and the average value is 4.802. This means that in recent years, the leadership of many Chinese manufacturing listed companies still do not have a sufficient understanding of a series of environmental protection concepts such as environmental governance, green development, and so on, and the essence of the concept of sustainable development has not yet fully penetrated into the top-level cognition of the enterprises. While the green awareness of executives of some enterprises is significantly ahead of the industry average, some enterprises have a score of zero, and the road to establishing the concept of green development of enterprises still has a long way to go. The maximum value of corporate green culture is 5.492, the minimum value is 1.956, and the average value is 3.503, which indicates that the overall fluctuation of the degree of green culture among listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry is small, and there is not a big gap between the industries, which can be stabilized basically around the level of the median value, but a few companies still need to make efforts in the area of culture construction.
Descriptive Statistics of the Main Variables.
Model Reasonableness Test
In order to ensure that the results of the study are real and reliable, this paper firstly carried out the reasonableness test of model 1 and 2 from the level of variance and fitting index respectively.
In model 1, from the aspect of variance, it is concluded through the test that the variance estimate of executive green cognition as a mediating variable is 0.968, with a significance level of p < .001; the variance estimate of the moderating variable enterprise green culture is 2.514, with a significance level of p < .001; and the variance estimate of the explanatory variable enterprise green management innovation is 0.876, with a significance level of p < .001. The results show that the variances of all three are significant, indicating that they have sufficient variability in the sample and are suitable for model construction.
In terms of fitting indexes, the chi-square value (Chisq) of Model 1 is 35.035; the comparative fit index (CFI) is 0.971, which is close to the ideal value (≥0.95); the root-mean-square error approximation (RMSEA) is 0.048, which is lower than 0.08 and in line with the criterion; and the standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) is 0.018, which is lower than 0.08 and also in line with the criterion. All the values show a good fit, so far, the rationality of model 1 is verified.
Similarly, in Model 2, the test concluded that in terms of variance, the variance estimate of the mediator variable of executives’ green cognition is 0.968, with a significance level of p < .001; the variance estimate of the moderator variable of corporate green culture is 2.514, with a significance level of p < .001; and the variance estimate of the explanatory variable of corporate green technological innovation is 0.943, with a significance level of p < .001. The results indicate that Model 2 is reasonable, and also meets the standard. 0.001. The results show that the variances of all three variables show significance, proving that they have sufficient variability in the sample and are suitable for model construction.
At the level of goodness of fit, the chi-square value (Chisq) of Model 2 is 48.264; the comparative fit index (CFI) is 0.943, which is close to the ideal value (≥0.95); the root-mean-square error approximation (RMSEA) is 0.057, which is lower than 0.08 and in line with the criterion; and the standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) is 0.021, which is lower than 0.08 and in line with the criterion. Like Model 1, all the indicators of Model 2 also show good fit, and its rationality is verified.
Model Validation Results
Innovation for GMI
The test results of the mediating and moderating effects of executive green cognition and corporate green culture on the green concern of multiple subjects at the same time on corporate green management innovation are shown in Table 2. The specific analysis is as follows:
Structural Equation Regression Results (GMI).
Path Relationship Analysis
It can be seen that the path coefficient of ESG on executives’ green perceptions is 0.086, indicating that ESG has a positive effect on executives’ green perceptions and is significant at 1% level; the path coefficient of media attention on executives’ green perceptions is 0.095, indicating that media attention also has a positive effect on executives’ green perceptions and is significant at 1% level; similarly, the path coefficient of public attention on executives’ green perceptions is 0.120, indicating that public attention also has a significant positive effect on executives’ green perceptions at 1% level. Coefficient is 0.120, indicating that public attention also has a significant positive effect on executives’ green perceptions at the 1% level. The above three paths indicate that when the degree of ESG disclosure is high, when the media’s monitoring and reporting of the enterprise is strong, and when the public’s search for enterprise-related information is strong, all of them will obviously stimulate the top leaders of the enterprise to produce a stronger green cognition, and the executives’ attention to environmental protection concepts will be greatly increased.
Continued analysis shows that the path coefficient of executives’ green cognition on corporate green culture is 1.376, indicating that executives’ green cognition has a positive influence on corporate green culture and is significant at 1% level; the path coefficient of executives’ green cognition on corporate green management innovation is 0.118, indicating that executives’ green cognition has a positive influence on corporate green management innovation and is significant at 1% level; at the same time, corporate green culture has a path coefficient of 0.087 on corporate green management innovation, indicating that corporate green culture also positively influences corporate green management innovation at a significant level of 1%. The above three path information implies that with the improvement of executives’ green cognition level, the green culture atmosphere within the enterprise will also become more intense, and at the same time stimulate the enterprise to make more efforts to integrate the existing resources, adjust the existing operation structure, and improve the level of enterprise green management innovation through the redistribution of human and material resources and the reconstruction of the operation system.
Intermediation Analysis
Based on the above research on the path relationship, it is easy to see that executive green cognition acts as a mediating variable that conveys the indirect effects of three different stimulus pressures from outside the company, namely ESG, media attention, and public attention, on the green management innovation of the company, and all three of them indirectly promote the company’s green management innovation by improving the level of green cognition of the company’s leadership and enhancing the executives’ emphasis on the environmental protection issue Performance. The green cognition of executives plays a mediating bridge role here.
Analysis of Regulatory Role
Through the analysis of the path relationship, it is concluded that the enterprise green culture as a moderating variable, its existence significantly promotes the degree of influence of executive green cognition on the enterprise green management innovation. Although the cultural system formed within the enterprise is not a formal institutional system, it will subconsciously affect the decision-making behavior of executives, and the level of green corporate culture will also affect the strength of the enterprise’s internal resources to rectify the situation, which in turn affects the performance of green management innovation.
Executive green cognition simultaneously mediates the effects of ESG, media attention, and public attention on corporate green management innovation; at the same time, corporate green culture has a moderating effect on the effects of executive green cognition on green management innovation. See Figure 4 for details.
Structural equation regression results (GMI).
Innovation for GTI
The validation results of the mediating and moderating effects of executive green cognition and corporate green culture on the impact of multiple subjects’ green concerns on corporate green technology innovation at the same time are shown in Table 3. The specific analysis is as follows:
Structural Equation Regression Results (GTI).
Path Relationship Analysis
In Table 3, it can be seen that the same as the previous section on corporate green management innovation is that the path coefficients of ESG, media attention, and public attention on executive green perceptions are likewise 0.086, 0.095, and 0.120 respectively, and the p-values are all <.001, which means that the green attention of the three different subjects all positively affects the green perceptions of executives within the enterprise, and is significant at the 1% level. Significantly. The intensity of ESG with media attention and public attention determines how much importance company leaders attach to the environmental benefits of the company, and high intensity of green attention leads to stronger executive green perceptions.
Further analysis, although the path coefficient and p-value of executives’ green cognition on corporate green culture have not changed and are still 1.376, and executives’ green cognition still has a positive impact on corporate green culture and is significant at the 1% level, the p-value of executives’ green cognition on corporate green technological innovation is higher than that on green management innovation, which is .039. Also given that its path coefficient of 0.031, it can be concluded that although executive green cognition also has a positive effect on corporate green technology innovation, it is only significant at the 10% level, and the effect is weaker than its effect on green management innovation. This suggests that the attention of company executives to environmental issues has a strong stimulating effect on the aspect of enterprises utilizing current internal resources to improve green management innovation performance by adjusting the core competencies they already possess, but its influence is reduced on the aspect of green technological innovation that requires enterprises to explore new and unknown territories and to carry out brand new patents and research and development.
More differently, the path coefficient of enterprise green culture on enterprise green technology innovation is 0.022, with a p-value of .136, which proves that the green cultural atmosphere within the enterprise cannot exert a significant influence on green technology innovation, and the green intensity of the culture is not able to promote the enterprise to produce more innovations in technology. This means that, after all, the enterprise green culture only represents the collective value identity of the company’s internal personnel, and its series of innovative behaviors of the enterprise only has a subtle influence, and does not have the official institutional mandatory intervention. This kind of invisible binding force is very obvious for enterprises to adjust the resources they already have to produce green management innovation performance, but it is of little help to enterprises to challenge innovation in emerging technology fields.
Intermediation Analysis
Through the above path analysis, it can be seen that executive green cognition plays a significant mediating role in the path of influence of ESG, media attention and public attention on corporate green technology innovation. As a mediating variable, it conveys the pressure of different subjects’ green concerns on corporate green technology innovation, and corporate executives improve their own green cognition level by receiving the stimulus of different external stakeholders’ concerns, which in turn promotes the company to actively explore emerging fields, produce more green patents, and improve corporate green technology innovation.
Analysis of the Regulatory Role
Unlike the results of the previous analysis of corporate green management innovation, corporate green culture does not significantly promote the influence of executive green cognition on corporate green technology innovation. This is due to the fact that the output of green technology requires companies to improve their own research and development capabilities, and the enhancement of the company’s own capabilities is not enough to rely on the soft influence of corporate culture alone; this informal binding can only improve the company’s innovative behaviors in management, but cannot help the company to improve its innovation in technology.
Executive green cognition simultaneously mediates the impact of ESG, media attention and public attention on corporate green technology innovation, but corporate green culture has a weaker facilitating role in the impact of executive green cognition on green technology innovation. See Figure 5 for details.
Structural equation regression results (GTI).
Comprehensively summarizing the above findings on the two models, it can be concluded that executive green cognition, as a mediating variable, plays a key role in the influence paths of all three different subjects, ESG, media attention and public attention, on corporate green innovation, especially in promoting green management innovation more strongly. So far, hypotheses H1, H2, and H3 were verified. At the same time, corporate green culture has a moderating role in the influence of corporate green innovation, although it is weak for the promotion of green technological innovation, but it can strongly amplify the stimulation of the green perception of executives on corporate green management innovation. So far, hypothesis H4 has been verified. It is easy to see that when enterprises need to improve their technological innovation, they should promote the direct improvement of executives’ green cognition to a greater extent; while when they need to increase the performance of management innovation, they should pay more attention to enhancing the synergy between executives’ green cognition and corporate green culture.
In summary, our findings confirm that executive green cognition serves as a pivotal mediating mechanism through which ESG, media attention, and public attention influence both green management and technological innovation. This result resonates with and extends the Attention-Based View of the firm, which posits that managerial focus shaped by external stimuli directs organizational action. Our study empirically demonstrates that this “focus of attention” is crystallized through executive cognition, providing a more granular psychological microfoundation for how multi-agent pressures are translated into corporate green responses.
Notably, the mediating pathway is significantly more potent for management innovation than for technological innovation. This critical distinction can be interpreted through the lens of resource allocation and organizational change theory. Management innovations—such as instituting environmental management systems or green supply chain protocols—are often administrative, reversible, and require less specialized resource commitment. They fall more directly within executives’ discretionary control, allowing cognitive shifts to manifest more readily. In contrast, technological innovation is inherently riskier, subject to longer development cycles, and dependent on specialized R&D capabilities, which may dilute the direct effect of executive cognition. This finding aligns with prior work (Jin et al., 2024) that highlights the organizational and financial inertia constraining green technological shifts, thereby underscoring a sequential pathway to corporate greening where managerial changes often precede technological breakthroughs.
Furthermore, the strong moderating effect of corporate green culture on the cognition-management innovation link, compared to its weaker role for technological innovation, offers a nuanced contribution to the literature on organizational culture and sustainability. It suggests that a shared green culture acts as an organizational amplifier, most effective when the required changes are behavioral and process-oriented (i.e., management innovation). For deeply technical endeavors, however, culture alone may be insufficient without complementary, dedicated R&D resources and technological absorptive capacity. This insight refines the prevailing understanding of culture’s role, positioning it not as a universal panacea but as a contingent enabler, most potent for specific types of innovation. Collectively, these interpretations contextualize our results within established theoretical frameworks while highlighting their novel implications for both theory and the strategic prioritization of green initiatives within firms.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Under the S-O-R framework, this study utilizes a sample of A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2013 to 2022 from a stakeholder perspective, and uses dynamic structural equations to construct a research model from the aspects of green management innovation, which represents enterprises’“utilization” innovation, and green technological innovation, which represents “exploratory” innovation, according to the theory of “dual innovation.” Based on the theory of “dual innovation,” a research model is constructed using dynamic structural equations from the aspects of green management innovation representing the enterprise’s “utilization” innovation and green technological innovation representing the “exploratory” innovation, to explore the realization path of multi-principal green concern on the enterprise’s green innovation behavior.
First of all, according to the S-O-R model, it is determined that individual responses are not only influenced by external stimuli, but also by subjective factors such as intrinsic motivation, cognition and emotion, and that there must be a motivational intermediary in the path from “antecedent” to “result,” and that other factors within the enterprise influence this path, as well as the path from “antecedent” to “result,” and that there are other factors within the enterprise that influence this path. There must be a mediator of motivation in the multiple paths from “antecedent” to “result,” and there are other factors within the enterprise that influence the effect of this mediator, and they coordinate with each other to influence the generation of green innovation in enterprises. Secondly, as an important decision-making force in the process of enterprise management, the executive team plays a pivotal role in the process of strategic decision-making and decision-making implementation, and its degree of concern and cognitive attitude toward environmental issues is a key factor in the formulation and implementation of enterprise green innovation strategy. The intensity of corporate ESG disclosure, the strength of media monitoring and reporting on corporate environmental issues, and the public’s active search for information about corporate pollution all stimulate corporate leadership to pay more attention to environmental issues, forcing executives to make corporate decisions with a higher level of awareness. Further, although corporate green culture is not a formal management system, it has a soft influence on a series of operational behaviors of the company, and it is also an important factor for executives to consider in their decision-making. Finally, the mediating effect of executives’ green perceptions and the moderating role of corporate green culture were determined through the establishment of dynamic structural equations and mathematical analysis using panel data.
This study makes distinct theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it extends the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework by contextualizing it within corporate sustainability, modeling how external multi-agent pressures (Stimulus) are filtered through executive cognition (Organism) to drive specific green innovation responses. Furthermore, it integrates the often-siloed perspectives of executives, regulators, and media into a cohesive multi-agent model, enriching our understanding of their interdependent roles in shaping corporate behavior. Practically, it offers actionable insights: it guides executives to consciously cultivate their green cognition and prioritize managerial innovations as a strategic first step. It advises regulators to design policies that foster executive environmental awareness and recognize management system certifications. Finally, it informs media stakeholders on how targeted coverage can amplify external pressure, effectively influencing corporate green agendas.
In conjunction with the above findings, the following insights were gained:
First, enterprises should emphasize and respond positively to green concerns from multiple actors such as ESG disclosure, the media and the public. These external concerns not only reflect society’s expectations for environmental protection and sustainable development, but are also an important driving force for green innovation. Enterprises should improve the information disclosure mechanism, strengthen interaction and communication with the media and the public, and understand and respond to social concerns in a timely manner, so as to establish a positive green image and win the trust and support of all sectors of society.
Secondly, based on the crucial role played by the executive team in green innovation, enterprises should make efforts to improve the green awareness level of executives and encourage them to actively learn and master the cutting-edge concepts and practical experience of green development. At the same time, enterprises should also focus on cultivating a talent team with green awareness and innovation ability to provide strong talent support for their green transformation. In addition, the construction of enterprise green culture should not be ignored. Enterprises should integrate green concepts into their daily operation and management through system construction and cultural propaganda, forming unique green competitive advantages and laying a solid foundation for sustainable development.
Thirdly, while this study is contextualized within developing economies, its findings gain broader relevance when contrasted with developed countries. In developing nations, green innovation is often driven by regulatory catch-up and growing public pressure, whereas developed economies are typically motivated by mature market incentives and advanced regulatory frameworks. Despite these differing drivers, the core mechanism—the positive role of multi-agent green attention in spurring corporate green innovation—demonstrates transnational validity. This comparative outlook not only reinforces the adaptability of our theoretical model but also underscores its value as a foundation for future cross-national research in environmental governance.
Despite its findings, this study has limitations that indicate areas for future exploration.
First, the sample of this study is focused on A-share listed companies in China’s manufacturing sector. The generalizability of our findings to other industries (energy, finance) or economies with different institutional and cultural contexts remains to be further tested. Future research could conduct cross-industry and cross-national comparative analyses to validate the boundary conditions and applicability of this theoretical framework. Second, regarding the measurement of the “executives’ green cognition” although this study employed reliable proxy variables, it remains a complex psychological construct that is difficult to capture fully. Future studies could adopt more direct measurement approaches, such as in-depth interviews or surveys with corporate executives, to obtain first-hand, richer data and thereby more accurately unveil the underlying psychological mechanisms. Finally, while this study identifies the significant moderating role of internal green culture, it offers limited exploration of other potential internal influencing mechanisms (organizational structure, incentive systems). Therefore, future research could introduce more diverse internal contextual factors and delve deeper into the synergistic or counteracting effects between different external green attention agents, thereby constructing a more comprehensive and multi-dimensional driving model for corporate green innovation.
Footnotes
Ethical Considerations
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.
Consent to Participate
No human or animal participants were involved in this study. All data used were obtained from publicly available sources with no identifiable information.
Author Contributions
Ma Wenyuan: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Data will be made available on request.