企业ESG表现、内外部关注与绿色协同创新OACHSSCD

Against the backdrop of increasingly severe global environmental issues,green collaborative innovation(GCI),through collaborative and sharing mechanisms between firms and their partners,effectively reduces innovation risks and has emerged as a superior pathway for firms to overcome the dilemma of green innovation and achieve green transformation.However,in practice,a lack of trust and conflicts of interest among partners constrain the effectiveness of GCI.Environmental,social,and governance(ESG)emphasizes the multi-dimensional sustainable management responsibilities of firms.Strong ESG performance can not only mitigate information asymmetry in collaborations but also offer a viable pathway to address trust and interest conflicts in GCI by prioritizing partners'interests.Therefore,this paper empirically analyzes the impact of ESG performance on GCI and its underlying mechanisms using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2023. The findings show that ESG performance can promote firms'GCI.This conclusion remains valid after addressing endogeneity concerns and conducting robustness tests.In terms of mechanisms,strong ESG performance enhances GCI through two pathways:first,amplifying the firm's sustainability signals through external concerns,which attracts partners to engage in collaborative innovation;and second,fostering a long-term sustainability orientation through internal concerns,which encourages firms to proactively establish stable partnerships,thereby facilitating the implementation of GCI.Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the promoting effect is more pronounced among firms located in municipalities and cities with independent planning status,those operating in non-heavy-polluting industries,large-scale enterprises,and state-owned enterprises.Extended analysis indicates that strong ESG performance has a more substantial effect on substantive GCI.The findings provide theoretical support for firms advancing ESG development to foster green collaborative innovation and achieve sustainable development,offering a theoretical basis and practical references for the government to promote corporate ESG disclosure systems and establish unified ESG evaluation standards. The contributions of this paper are threefold.First,it shifts the research focus from closed corporate green innovation to cross-organizational open GCI,addressing the gap in understanding how ESG performance influences inter-organizational GCI and enriching theoretical research on green innovation through multi-actor interaction and cross-organizational boundary perspectives.Second,based on the attention-based view,it reveals the role of internal and external concerns in the relationship between ESG performance and GCI,thereby unpacking the"black box"of how ESG performance drives GCI.Third,by delving into the differential impact of ESG performance on GCI driven by different motivations,it provides more nuanced empirical evidence for accurately understanding the innovation value of ESG.