CEO Tenure and Green Innovation: The Mediating Role of ESG

With growing attention to environmental sustainability and corporate social ‎responsibility, Chinese corporations are facing increasing regulatory and market ‎pressures to adopt practices that foster long-term competitiveness. Green innovation has ‎become a critical strategy for sustainable growth. In addition, ESG practices have ‎gained increasing focus as a mechanism to promote corporate sustainability and ‎improve transparency. In this case, this study examines the effect of CEO tenure on ‎green innovation and the mediating role of ESG. Using data from Chinese corporations ‎between 2020 and 2024, this study finds a negative association between CEO tenure ‎and green innovation. Furthermore, ESG is shown to mediate this relationship, ‎indicating that CEO tenure influences green innovation both directly and indirectly. ‎Moreover, the negative influence of CEO tenure on green innovation is stronger in ‎manufacturing firms than in non-manufacturing firms. These findings provide ‎implications for corporate governance and policies to foster the development of green ‎innovation‎.