Green is queen: Do female CEOs promote substantive green innovation or tactical green innovation?

ABSTRACT Green innovation serves as a pivotal strategy for firms to achieve sustainable development. Given the steadily increasing demand for female leadership in the firms, understanding how female CEOs impact green innovation has emerged as a critical area of inquiry. This study utilizes panel data from Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2025 to empirically investigate how female CEOs impact different types of green innovation. The research findings indicate that female CEOs play a significant role in promoting substantive green innovation while simultaneously inhibiting tactical green innovation. From the perspective of time attention allocation, female CEOs exert differentiated impacts on green innovation by suppressing the senior executives' current attention and promoting their future attention. Furthermore, media environmental protection coverage exerts distinct moderation effects on the impact of female CEOs on the green innovation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of female CEOs on the two types of green innovation is more significant in state-owned enterprises, heavy-polluting industries, northern regions, and firms with longer female CEO tenure. This study contributes to the advancement of cross-theoretical research on leadership and corporate governance.