Heterogeneous Executive Environmental Awareness and Corporate Green Transformation: The Mediating Roles of Substantive and Symbolic Green Innovation

As resource and environmental constraints continue to tighten, corporate green transformation has become a key micro-level foundation for achieving high-quality development. Using data on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2024, this study examines the effect of executive environmental awareness on corporate green transformation and explores the underlying mechanisms. The results show that executive environmental awareness significantly promotes corporate green transformation, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness checks. Mechanism tests indicate that green innovation serves as an important channel through which executive environmental awareness affects corporate green transformation. This channel operates primarily through symbolic green innovation, whereas the mediating role of substantive green innovation is not significant. Further analysis shows that pressure-oriented environmental awareness has a stronger positive effect on corporate green transformation than development-oriented environmental awareness, suggesting that corporate green transformation in the current institutional context remains largely responsive to external pressures. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the positive effect of executive environmental awareness is more pronounced among non-state-owned firms and firms located in eastern China. This study uncovers the internal cognitive mechanism underlying corporate green transformation from the perspective of executive awareness and provides empirical evidence on how environmental awareness can be translated into green transformation practices.