The Impact of Political Incentives Received by Key Local Officials on Enterprises’ Green Innovations for the Development and Construction of Ecological Civilization in China

In recent years, there has been an increase in awareness of the need for green innovation to attain sustainable development. Green innovation has been proven to be one of the ways to achieve sustainable development. Most research on determinants of green business innovation has focused on either personal or regulatory factors. This paper examines whether and how the personal factors of local officials are rarely concerned. While in the context of accelerating the construction of an ecological civilization, China has implemented a series of reforms, including those that concern the achievement of environmental objectives while assessing the performance and supervising the responsibility of officials. As these reforms have been designed on a personalized basis, this paper adopts a micro perspective to measure the political incentives of key local officials. Taking A-share-listed companies as our sample, our empirical investigation shows that the political motivations of key local officials can promote regional enterprises’ green innovation, and the government–enterprise relationship along with the corporate social responsibility of enterprises can strengthen this effect. Our conclusions prove that the reforms mentioned above have been operating effectively, and political incentives have improved local officials’ supervision of regional enterprises’ energy conservation and pollution reduction, which provides new evidence for the “promotion competition” of local officials during the transitional period in China.