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.

本研究以中国碳排放权交易试点政策为准自然实验，采用双重差分（difference-in-differences, DID）法探究企业绿色创新的行业同伴效应，有效解决了既往研究中存在的内生性难题。研究结果显示，企业绿色创新存在显著的行业同伴效应：控排企业的绿色创新水平越高，将通过该效应对同行业其他企业的绿色创新产生影响。即便经过稳健性检验与内生性处理，该结论仍具有统计显著性。进一步分析表明，该同伴效应主要通过两大传导路径发挥作用：其一为企业自身的约束行为，其二为企业对控排企业的策略性模仿。此外，企业的定价能力与控排企业的行业地位，均会对绿色创新的行业同伴效应产生影响。最后，本研究还发现，内部控制与外部关注度会影响同伴效应的发挥效果——具体而言，高质量内部控制与更高的外部关注度，可显著强化企业绿色创新的行业同伴效应。