China has been upgrading the industrial structure (ISU) at the regional level through innovation to achieve socioeconomic progress, but there is less known about the complex intermediary mechanisms regulating the government’s green innovation preference (GGIP)-ISU nexus from a regional perspective in China. Experts agree that varying environmental regulations (ER) intensity alters the relationship dynamics between innovation and ISU. Thus, using regional panel data (2005–2019), the paper develops an ER-based threshold regression model to assess the GGIP-ISU nexus under various ER levels in China. Following the statistically acceptable stationarity test outcomes, the regression corroborated the GGIP had disrupted ISU in China. Second, the ER-threshold model depicted that GGIP flexibility and ER rigidity were found interconnected, while the GGIP-ISU connection was characterized by a U-shaped relationship in which ER acted as a threshold variable. Third, the region-based heterogeneity test reflected that there was significant disparity in the inhibitory effect of GGIP on ISU between resource and non-resource-based regions, i.e., GGIP had a more significant inhibitory influence on the ISU in the non-resource-based regions than in the resource-based regions. The paper recommends critical policy implications for the enhancement of ISU in China.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the scope and market size of flexible employment in sustainable enterprise development have significantly increased worldwide, yet academic literature offer little information about the outcomes and moderators of flexible employment in China. The paper advances current knowledge and empirically addresses this gap by examining the effects of flexible employment on enterprise innovation input and output, with information technology capability and labor regulation as unexplored moderators. Based on data from 1179 manufacturing enterprises in China, this paper uses the OLS method to conduct empirical tests. The results show that (1) flexible employment has positively contributed to sustainable enterprise development by facilitating innovation inputs and outputs; (2) superior enterprise information technology capabilities and strict labor regulations were significant moderating factors in this relationship. The findings provide credible evidence for enterprises to pursue flexible employment as an inexhaustible impetus for sustainable economic and enterprise development.