Green entrepreneurship orientation and environmental, social, and governance performance: Do contractual strategic alliances matter?

The driving forces that enable firms to achieve better environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance have been a popular topic in academia. However, in the context of increasing numbers of entrepreneurial teams engaging in green entrepreneurship, whether a green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) enhances ESG performance from an overall strategic orientation is still unclear. If so, what are the mechanisms by which a GEO influences ESG performance? To determine the potential relationship and influencing mechanism between a GEO and ESG performance, we use Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2022 as our research sample and fixed effects and difference‐in‐difference models to explore how a GEO affects ESG performance. The results show that a GEO significantly and positively affects ESG performance, especially for nonstate‐owned enterprises (nonSOEs), firms with high digital transformation, and firms in the manufacturing industry. Further research shows that participation in contractual strategic alliances (SAs) can strengthen the effect of a GEO on ESG performance. Moreover, we find that a GEO can efficiently encourage firms to engage in contractual SAs, that the link between the two is moderated by financial constraints (FCs) in an inverse‐U manner, and that this relationship is evident only for nonSOEs. In conclusion, our study provides a nuanced understanding of how a GEO, contractual SAs, and FCs collectively shape corporate ESG activities and elucidates their far‐reaching implications for enhancing ESG performance. Our empirical findings also have practical implications for firms seeking to improve their ESG performance.