Do politically connected CEOs promote Chinese listed industrial firms’ green innovation? The mediating role of external governance environments

This study focuses on the impact of politically connected CEOs on the firms’ green innovation. Using the data from Chinese listed industrial firms from 2008 to 2015, we find that politically connected CEOs and CEOs with stronger political connections promote more green innovation. In addition, we compared the impact of CEOs with connections involving central or local government on green innovation. The results suggest that only CEOs have political connections with central government significantly affect green innovation. Furthermore, we investigated the moderating effects of the three external governance factors, environmental enforcement intensity (EEI), media coverage (Media_JF) and analyst coverage (Analyst), and our results show that EEI negatively moderates this relationship, the moderating effect of Media is negligible, and Analyst significantly and positively regulates the relationship between CEO political connections and green innovation.