Expectation Gap,Environmental Strategy And Enterprise Green Innovation

China’s economy has entered a new era of optimizing industrial structure and pursuing high-quality development,and green is the essential requirement of high-quality development.Paying equal attention to economic development and environmental protection not only helps economic transformation and development,but also embodies the socialist ecological concept of "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets".As the main body of the socialist market economy,enterprises play an irreplaceable role in coordinating economic development and environmental protection.How to promote the green transformation of enterprises is the key to help China’s high-quality economic development and sustainable environmental improvement.Innovation is the core driving force of enterprise development,and the green transformation and development of enterprises must also rely on the green innovation of enterprises.In the past,the researches on the driving factors of green innovation were mostly based on Porter’s theory,considering the influence of environmental regulation,an external government behavior,on the green innovation of enterprises.However,enterprises facing similar environmental regulation intensity have different green innovation practices.Some enterprises actively carry out green innovation and successfully realize green transformation,others are dragged down by green innovation risk and high cost,and even some enterprises make "greenwashing".This shows that in addition to environmental regulations,there are also key factors that affect the green innovation of enterprises.Expectation theory points out that business expectation is the basis of enterprise decision-making,and the gap between actual performance and expected performance is one of the key factors affecting enterprise behavior.Therefore,this paper attempts to introduce the enterprise behavior theory and expectation theory into the research of driving mechanism of green innovation,explore the influence of active choice of enterprises on their green innovation,and make an in-depth study of this influence to explore its mechanism and boundary conditions.Based on the empirical analysis of the unbalanced panel composed of 1651 data of listed manufacturing companies from 2010 to 2019,this paper explores the influence of the gap between actual performance and expected performance on green innovation of enterprises,and draws the following conclusions:（1）The expected gap has a significant role in promoting green innovation,that is,the greater the gap between actual performance and expected level of enterprises,the more enterprises tend to carry out green innovation;Environment plays an intermediary role between the expectation gap and green innovation,that is,the expectation gap will first change the enterprise’s environmental strategy,and then promote the enterprise to carry out green innovation;social responsibility plays a regulatory role between environmental strategy and green innovation,that is,the enterprises that formulate and implement similar environmental strategies,the higher their social responsibility,the better their green innovation action.（2）Compared with green invention patents,the expectation gap has promoted the innovation of green utility model patents of enterprises more significantly,and the environmental strategy has played a part of intermediary role in it;However,corporate social responsibility can’t adjust the relationship between environmental strategy and green invention patents and green utility model patents.（3）Compared with non-state-owned enterprises,when the state-owned enterprises are in the expectation gap,they are more inclined to carry out green innovation,and the enterprise environmental strategy plays a completely intermediary role in it;However,in both state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises,corporate social responsibility can’t adjust the relationship between environmental strategy and green innovation.（4）Compared with enterprises in the clean industry,enterprises in the polluting industry are more inclined to relieve pressure and improve performance through green innovation,so that their actual performance can return to the expected level.The innovations of this paper are as follows: Firstly,the enterprise behavior theory and expectation theory are introduced into the research of enterprise green innovation,and the internal driving force of enterprise green innovation is found.Considering the initiative choice of enterprise innovation,it broadens the research field of green innovation and enriches the research of enterprise behavior theory in the field of green innovation.Secondly,in the framework of "performance-innovation",this paper discusses the intermediary role of corporate environmental strategy in this framework,and the regulatory role of corporate social responsibility between environmental strategy and green innovation,which expands the research on performance feedback mechanism and explores the role of social responsibility in the innovation and development of enterprises.This paper theoretically analyzes and empirically tests the green innovation behavior of enterprises under the expectation gap,which is helpful to help enterprises at a competitive disadvantage in the industry to actively choose green innovation,and provides a reference for the green innovation practice of Chinese enterprises.