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Can the social trust promote corporate green innovation? Evidence from China

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Abstract

Corporate green innovation has played a crucial role in balancing profitability and environmental protection. The existing research on determinant factors of green innovation has its main defects in emphasizing excessively enterprise’s formal institutional environment and neglecting the informal institutional environment, causing an incomplete understanding of the relationship between institutional environments and corporate green innovation. To bridge this gap, using a sample of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed firms in manufacturing industry during the period of 2010–2016, we investigate how social trust, an important informal institutions, affects corporate green innovation. Our results show that social trust is positively associated with green innovation, remaining valid after applying endogenous and robustness tests. In addition, the positive relationship between social trust and green innovation is more prominent when the enterprise is non-state-owned or locates in a looser command-and-control (CAC) environmental regulations region. Further analysis shows that social trust boosts corporate green innovation via promoting knowledge sharing, decreasing financing constraints, and fulfilling more corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper enriches the literature concerning social trust and green innovation and draws back more public attention on the role of informal institutions play in promoting green innovation.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. All Hausman tests reject the null hypothesis that individual effects are not related to explanatory variables. Finally, the fixed effect model is chosen.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and corrections on the earlier draft of our paper, upon which we have improved the content.

Funding

The study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71472091; 71372031).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, 2# Southeast University Road, Jiangning District, Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China, 210096

    Zicheng Pan, Liang Liu & Qianting Ma

  2. Bussiness School, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Shuyuan Bai

Authors
  1. Zicheng Pan
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  2. Liang Liu
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  3. Shuyuan Bai
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  4. Qianting Ma
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Contributions

Pan Zicheng focuses on the conceptualization, methodology, writing-original draft, and writing-review and editing. Liu Liang focuses on the investigation, validation, and formal analysis. Shuyuan Bai focuses on the investigation, validation, and writing-original draft. Ma Qianting focuses on methodology, writing-original draft, and writing-review and editing.

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Correspondence to Qianting Ma.

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Pan, Z., Liu, L., Bai, S. et al. Can the social trust promote corporate green innovation? Evidence from China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 52157–52173 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14293-8

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