This paper examines the impact of customer concentration on green innovation in Chinese listed firms between 2006 and 2018 through the dynamic panel generalized method of moments regressions. It is reported that major customers positively impact corporate green innovation, indicating that firms have more incentives to engage in innovative green practices to maintain stable relationships with major customers. In addition, the positive relationship between customer concentration and green innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, firms located in the provinces with a high level of marketization, and after China's new Environmental Protection Law implementation. Moreover, we observe that the positive impact of customer concentration on corporate green innovation is more significant among industrial firms and firms operating in heavily polluting industries. Furthermore, industrial competition is an essential channel for major customers to affect corporate green innovation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.