Peer effect on green innovation: Evidence from 782 manufacturing firms in China

Peer influence, market power, and enterprises' green innovation: Evidence from Chinese listed firms

“…The current green transformation is strategically a comprehensive reengineering of the overall industry technology base as well as business models and organizational management, which leads to changes in the rules of trade and the competitive order of the entire industry. Peer influence stemming from the industry's green transformation inevitably leads to the need for companies to reorganize their structures, continuously increase their green innovation efforts, and enhance their green innovation capabilities to adapt to the changing market (Li et al, 2023; Wang, Zhao, & Zhu, 2022).…”

“…Intrinsic sources include the need for corporate ecological and social responsibility (Padilla‐Lozano & Collazzo, 2022), environmental awareness (Cao et al, 2022), financing constraints (Zhai et al, 2022), resource redundancy (Yun et al, 2022), enhancing competitiveness (Yin et al, 2020) and strengthening organizational capabilities (Yahya et al, 2021); external sources include institutional pressure (Li & Li, 2022), social expectations (de Medeiros et al, 2018), and stakeholder pressure (Song et al, 2020). In addition, recent studies have focused on motivation from peer groups (Li et al, 2023; Wang, Zhao, & Zhu, 2022). However, in general, the study of peer effects on enterprises' green innovation is still lacking and lags behind social practice.…”

The synergy impact of external environmental pressures and corporate environmental commitment on innovations in green technology

“…Green‐technology innovation is a relative concept rather than an absolute principle; a technology that would have been viewed as green in the past may become understood as gray due to advances in technology (Wang, Cui, & Zhao, 2021). Therefore, the level of innovation in green technology by competitors directly affects the motivation and willingness of enterprises to engage in similar activities (Wang, Zhao, & Zhu, 2022). This is because, first, due to competition‐based pressure, enterprises can become motivated to invest more resources in the development of more advanced green technologies, including the transfer of green technologies and green‐technology innovation, in order to minimize the technological gap between themselves and their competitors as significantly as possible (Bossle et al, 2016; Yang & Han, 2021).…”

“…There is a consensus that enterprises are the main drivers of green technological innovation (Wang, Li, et al, 2022; Wang, Zhao, & Zhu, 2022). From 2016 to 2022, of the 50 most prolific patent assignees in the world, 43 were enterprises from Japan (15), China (8), Germany (7), the United States (6), South Korea (3), France (2), Saudi Arabia, and Denmark (1).…”

“…Theoretical implicationsThis article revealed, for the first time, the influence of different stakeholders on the adoption of green-technology-innovation strategies by private enterprises in China. Stakeholders are people or organizations that can influence the achievement of goals(Cai & Li, 2018;Wang, Zhao, & Zhu, 2022) Donaldson and Preston (1995). further emphasize that the definition of stakeholders should include all individuals and groups that have a legitimate interest in the processes behind enterprises' activities.…”