Going Green: How Executive Environmental Awareness and Green Innovation Drive Corporate Sustainable Development

Promoting the harmonious coexistence of environment and economy is the key to achieving sustainable development at both the national and corporate levels. The focus of the study revolves around executive awareness and responsibility awareness on corporate sustainable development performance through green innovation. This study aims to investigate the relationship between executive environmental awareness and corporate sustainable development performance in A-share listed companies in heavily polluting industries. The sample for this study consists of Chinese heavily polluting listed companies from 2012 to 2020. The findings show that how companies with executives with high environmental awareness and responsibility awareness are more likely to develop and implement green innovations. Based on the analysis of the power of internal executives and their environmental awareness on sustainable development performance using the top-level hierarchy theory, strategic cognition theory, and resource dependence theory, it was found that the higher the executive power and environmental awareness, the more they can promote sustainable development performance, although the degree of influence differs. At the same time, green innovation plays an intermediary role in the impact of executive power and awareness on sustainable development performance. Also, external political risks can moderate the indirect impact of executive environmental awareness on corporate sustainable development performance through green innovation in a number of ways.