Industry Peer Effect of Corporate Green Innovation

This study uses China's pilot carbon emission trading policy as a quasi-natural experiment and the difference-in-differences (DID) method to explore the industry peer effect of corporate green innovation, effectively solving the endogeneity issue in previous studies. Results show corporate green innovation has a significant industry peer effect: higher green innovation levels of emission-controlled enterprises affect other same-industry enterprises’ green innovation via this effect. The conclusion remains statistically significant even after robustness tests and endogeneity treatment. Further research finds this peer effect mainly works through two channels: enterprises’ own constraint behaviors and their strategic imitation of emission-controlled enterprises. Besides, enterprises’ pricing power and emission-controlled enterprises’ industry status both impact the peer effect of green innovation. Finally, the study reveals internal control and external attention influence the peer effect’s effectiveness—specifically, high-quality internal control and more external attention significantly strengthen the industry peer effect of corporate green innovation.