A Literature Review on the Drivers of Corporate Carbon Performance Based on the Goal of Dual Carbon

According to the Dual Carbon objectives, corporate carbon performance plays an important role in the low-carbon transition of China. The available reviews are largely reliant on literature published between 2010 and 2020 and do not offer enough information on the logic of the drivers in the new era; most of them just split the internal and external factors in general. This paper will choose core journals in both Chinese and English literature published between 2020 and 2026 and develop a three-dimensional analytical structure using external institutional policies, market stakeholders, and internal governance strategies using Chinese and foreign core literature in the same period. Carbon performance is defined as having two types, i.e., outcome-oriented and process - outcome integrated, and measurement criteria have not been made uniform. Internal digitalization, green innovation, and changes in managerial cognition may be the only methods of enhancing carbon performance due to external regulation and stakeholder pressure. The impact of different drivers is limited by the characteristics of the firm and the regional heterogeneity. The existing studies have such drawbacks as non-uniform measurement criteria and clusters of studies focused on listed companies. Based on these findings, the present paper suggests research opportunities that could be used as reference points for corporate decarbonization and policy enhancement.