Green Knowledge Management and Green Technology Innovation: Roles of Green Organizational Identity and Incentive Environmental Regulation

Green knowledge management represents a critical strategic resource for firms, enabling the acquisition, integration, and application of environmentally relevant knowledge to support green technological advancement. However, the mechanisms by which green knowledge management fosters green technology innovation remain underexplored. Grounded in the dynamic capabilities theory perspective, this research develops a moderated mediation framework to investigate how green knowledge management, through dynamic capabilities, impacts green technology innovation, particularly considering the moderating effects of green organizational identity and incentive environmental regulation. Using responses collected from 358 enterprises in China, the proposed framework was validated through hierarchical regression analysis, combined with the PROCESS procedure. The empirical findings demonstrate that green knowledge management strengthens firms’ dynamic capabilities, which in turn promote green technology innovation. Specifically, absorptive and transformative capability serve as partial mediators in the relationship between green knowledge management and green technology innovation. Furthermore, green organizational identity strengthens the positive effect of green knowledge management on dynamic capabilities, while incentive environmental regulation enhances the impact of dynamic capabilities on green technology innovation. These findings advance understanding of how green knowledge management promotes firms’ green technological development by activating and leveraging dynamic capabilities, thereby yielding important contributions to theoretical research and managerial practice.