DATAAN

Executives play a pivotal role in shaping a firm's environmental performance. Yet a<br>clear disconnect persists between merely holding green credentials and actually<br>directing green attention, along with strategic-manipulation risks entailed by executive<br>green attention, these issues remain and merit attention. This paper builds a unified,<br>multi-theoretical framework that fuses Upper-Echelons Theory with the Attention-Based<br>View, uses strategic-signaling theory to explain mechanisms, and invokes informal<br>institution theory to model boundary conditions. Drawing on a sample of Chinese A<br>share listed firms from 2016 to 2023, this paper applies machine-learning and textual<br>analysis techniques to construct a corporate environmental news sentiment indicator<br>and examines how executive green attention influences it. The results show that<br>executive green attention significantly inflates corporate environmental news sentiment<br>value. Mechanism tests reveal that this effect operates through managerial<br>manipulation of the corporate green image, specifically through expanding the green<br>patent bubble and increasing symbolic green innovation. Moderation analyses further<br>indicate that Confucian culture and long-term philanthropic giving, two informal<br>institutions, not only weaken the inflationary impact of executive green attention on<br>news sentiment but also attenuate the above strategic manipulation channels.<br>Additional analyses reveal that when Confucian culture and long-term philanthropic<br>giving are strong, executive green attention significantly lifts total-factor productivity<br>(TFP) and lowers financial risk (Z-score). This paper underscoring the pivotal role of ethics in shifting green practices from symbolism to substance.<br>