Is Green Innovation Driven by Performance of Carbon Neutrality Continuous?

Continuous green innovation is crucial for advancing company sustainability. How to promote corporate continuous green innovation in the pursuit of carbon neutrality is an important issue that requires urgent attention. Based on annual firm-level data in the Chinese A-share market from 2018 to 2023, empirical results indicate that good performance of carbon neutrality can significantly promote continuous green innovation in firms, and several robustness tests have confirmed that the findings of this research remain valid. Mechanism analysis reveals that the performance of carbon neutrality promotes corporate continuous green innovation through resource and governance effects. Additionally, the performance of carbon neutrality has a more significant impact on corporate continuous green innovation among companies in non-technology-intensive industries, with lower quality of environmental information disclosure, located in regions with higher levels of public environmental concern, and facing higher government environmental attention. Further analysis shows that the performance of carbon neutrality primarily promotes continuous substantive green innovation, and the impact of performance of carbon neutrality on continuous green innovation also boosts green innovation efficiency.