IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i24p11127-d1816129.html

From Intelligence to Creativity: Can AI Adoption Drive Sustained Corporate Innovation Investment?

Author

Listed:
  • Kongwen Wang

    (School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China)

  • Sihan Zhang

    (School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China)

  • Changjiang Zhang

    (School of Economics and Management, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, China)

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has brought unprecedented impact and opportunities for the sustainable development of family firms. This paper examines the impact of AI on innovation investment in family firms using a sample of Chinese A-share listed family firms from 2007 to 2024. The results show that AI significantly promotes innovation investment in family firms to achieve sustainable development. Mechanism analysis shows that AI enhances both the willingness and capability of family firms to invest in innovation by improving their risk-taking levels and resource allocation efficiency, thereby promoting innovation investment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of AI on innovation investment of family firms is more significant in smaller family firms, those directly founded by families, those with more family involvement in management, and those prior to intergenerational succession. Furthermore, the study finds that AI significantly improves the innovation performance of family firms. Our findings provide important theoretical and practical guidance for enterprises seeking to leverage AI to catalyze innovation investment and thereby achieve long-term value growth and sustainable development.

Suggested Citation

  • Kongwen Wang & Sihan Zhang & Changjiang Zhang, 2025. "From Intelligence to Creativity: Can AI Adoption Drive Sustained Corporate Innovation Investment?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(24), pages 1-26, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:24:p:11127-:d:1816129
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/24/11127/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/24/11127/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:24:p:11127-:d:1816129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.