Antecedent configurations of green innovation and corporate sustainable development performance evidence from chinese heavy-polluting enterprises

With the introduction of the concept of “new quality productivity” and the ongoing pursuit of the “dual carbon” goals, green innovation and sustainable development have become central topics in contemporary society and key strategies for enterprises to achieve high-quality growth. Drawing on the resource orchestration theory, this paper employs fsQCA and quantitative regression methods to analyze data from 495 heavily polluting enterprises, examining the interactive effects of six antecedent conditions at the technology-organization-environment level on corporate green innovation. It also investigates how different configurations of green innovation models influence enterprise performance in terms of sustainable development. The findings reveal that: (1) Enterprise green innovation exhibits the characteristic of “multiple pathways leading to the same outcome, emerging from the interplay of various conditions. There are three paths to achieving a high level of green innovation, namely, digital-driven and resource-optimized type, collaborative innovation and environment-adaptive type, and internally-driven and externally-attracted green innovation type. Digital transformation and market competition play a major role in all three paths. (2) The three high-green-innovation pathways exert varying impacts on enterprise sustainable development performance, reflecting the feature of “multiple pathways leading to different outcomes”. This paper contributes to the literature on green innovation and sustainable development performance by exploring both the antecedents and outcomes of green innovation and integrating diverse factors into a unified analytical framework.