This study investigates how institutional resilience facilitates successful intergenerational succession in Chinese family firms. Drawing on institutional resilience theory and socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore configurational causal pathways. Based on a sample of 20 Chinese family firms, we identify four core conditions (pre-succession planning, multi-dimensional governance structure, professional tool empowerment, cultural spirit inheritance) and one contextual condition (institutional environment adaptability). Results show that cultural spirit inheritance is the only necessary condition for successful succession, while five equifinal configurations of institutional resilience are sufficient to achieve effective succession. By contrast, weakness in any two core institutional resilience dimensions significantly increases the likelihood of succession failure. This study advances contextualized family business research by unpacking the combinatorial mechanisms of institutional resilience in an emerging market context and provides actionable implications for family firms and policymakers.

We examine whether campaign-based anti-corruption approaches effectively curb corruption in the long term. Our empirical setting exploits a unique anti-corruption campaign in the Chinese football community from 2009 to 2012. With match-fixing measured as abnormal points won in key matches, we find that although an anti-corruption campaign reduces match-fixing during its active phase, its long-term effect fades quickly, and the level of match-fixing significantly rebounds after the campaign ends. Our results indicate that without any institutional changes, combating corruption by launching intermittent campaigns has limited long-term effects.

This study examines how institutional entrepreneurs in China’s aviation sector navigate the dual pressures of domestic carbon emission trading schemes (ETS) and the global Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). Using qualitative case study methods, including 24 elite interviews with aviation executives, regulators, and carbon market experts, we analyse the role of China Southern Airlines (CSA) as a key actor in sustainability transition. Findings reveal that field-level contradictions, social legitimacy, and collective institutional entrepreneurship shape the adoption of carbon reduction strategies. The study contributes to aviation environmental and sustainability policies and institutional theory by highlighting the interplay between regulatory compliance and global sustainability norms in emerging economies.

Enhancing the performance of corporate green supply chain management (GSCM) represents a critical enabler for delivering on the central imperatives of the global low-carbon transition. Using panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2003 to 2022, this study employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the impact of the Low-Carbon City Pilot (LCCP) policy on firms' GSCM performance. The results show that the LCCP policy significantly improves firms' GSCM performance, and this effect remains robust across a range of sensitivity tests. Mechanism analyses reveal that the policy operates primarily by stimulating green innovation and increasing investment in environmental protection equipment. Furthermore, financial constraints play a significant moderating role: the positive effect of the policy on GSCM performance is stronger when firms face fewer financing constraints. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the policy effects are more pronounced among non-heavy-polluting enterprises, those located in resource-dependent cities, and ISO 14001-certified enterprises. This study provides novel micro-level evidence on the environmental governance effects of place-based climate policies, and offers key policy implications for scaling up low-carbon city pilots and promoting corporate supply chain decarbonization.

Digital technologies are often portrayed as disruptive levers for decarbonisation, yet many digital green initiatives improve transparency and efficiency without redesigning how environmental value is authorised, coordinated, and appropriated. We address this puzzle by theorising green digital business model innovation as the evolution of venture-level configurations under multi-domain selection in policy-steered sustainability transitions. Building on the activity-system view of business models and on innovation-studies, we define business model radicality as coupled reconfiguration across content, structure, and governance rather than technology novelty alone. We further theorise a cross-domain convergence requirement: configurations are retained only when they align simultaneously with institutional role allocations, market interfaces, technological infrastructures, and ecological verification demands. A comparative longitudinal study of three blockchain-enabled initiatives in China’s energy-finance nexus shows that radical disintermediation is screened out early when any single domain withholds authorisation or credible settlement, whereas incumbent-compatible configurations are retained through sequencing, interpretive pruning, and boundary-spanning alignment work. The study contributes to innovation studies by treating business models as meso-level selection objects, sharpening configuration-level radicality, and explaining why digital green opportunities often remain incremental in regulated transition systems.

The emphasis on environmental sustainability outcomes (ESO) in emerging economies has increased recently, requiring in-depth research to manage the complex interplay between socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors. With a particular focus on China, this study describes this significant relationship using a good technique that comprises standardized questionnaires administered to a large sample of different organizational levels. This research examined several factors and their effects on ESO. First, the results show that the kind of economic system (EST) directly affects ESO; no direct relationship was discovered between ESO and the industrialization level (LI). Furthermore, it was demonstrated that government funding for eco-sustainability projects (GFESP) and community engagement and eco-education initiatives (CEEEI) had a direct impact on ESO. Secondly, the results demonstrated that implementing eco-policies and regulations (IEPR) had a full mediating effect between EST and ESO. Third, political instability (PI) and corruption level (CL), which are essentially the outcome of China's current political and environmental issues, diminish the correlation between EST and ESO. These findings demonstrate that China's environmental sustainability has to be improved using a multimodal approach. The public is encouraged to push legislators to bolster eco-laws and policies in order to emphasize environmental preservation. Initiatives to reduce corruption and maintain political stability may also bolster the beneficial effects of economic frameworks on ESO.

This paper exploits China’s culture-oriented institutional reform as a quasinatural experiment to examine the impact of cultural policies on water pollution. Using a difference-in-differences approach with city-level panel data from 2003 to 2020, we find that the reform leads to a significant reduction in water pollution in pilot cities. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effect is more pronounced in cities with better economic performance, higher administrative status, richer tourism resources, and more abundant human capital. The reform prompts a shift in local industrial structure toward less-polluting sectors, with a marked contraction in pollution-intensive activities. It also strengthens local environmental regulation and enhances green innovation, thereby contributing to pollution reduction. Our findings highlight the spillover environmental effects of policies not explicitly designed for environmental purposes.

Against the backdrop of escalating global carbon emission reduction urgency and China’s "dual carbon" goals, individual carbon trading (ICT) has emerged as a key measure to tap into consumer-side emission reduction potential. However, the current ICT mechanism remains in the exploratory stage, plagued by limited access to formal trading channels, strict entry barriers, and low public penetration, only 5 carbon exchanges in China allow individual participation, with fewer than 10,000 total participants. Focusing on mechanism integrity and integrating the carbon inclusive system, this study explores the influencing factors of ICT operation and constructs targeted optimization strategies. Based on Mechanism Design Theory, the Theory of Planned Behavior, and Value-Belief-Norm Theory, a theoretical model covering five core ICT components was established. Using data from 1,200 questionnaires across 15 Chinese cities, multiple linear regression and hierarchical regression were employed to analyze the impacts of institutional fairness, technical usability, social atmosphere, and individual cognition. Results show: (1) Institutional fairness increases quota compliance by 38% through transparent rules; (2) User-friendly technical tools boost engagement by 1.8x, enhancing accounting accuracy and platform efficiency; (3) Social atmosphere moderates the effect of individual cognition on incentive conversion, particularly strongly in rural areas; (4) Individual cognition mediates the relationship between social atmosphere and trading platform efficiency. Additionally, optimizing mechanism components is more critical for long-term operation than single incentives. This study proposes a multi-dimensional optimization framework, providing theoretical and policy references for improving ICT integrity and advancing "dual carbon" goals.

This study examines how emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) respond to cross-national diversity in environmental regulation. Prior research suggests that internationalization exposes EMNEs to diverse environmental standards and may facilitate regulatory learning, yet offers a limited understanding of the mechanisms through which such exposure translates into green innovation. Drawing on institutional theory, we argue that green innovation is particularly fostered when EMNEs operate across host countries whose environmental regulatory regimes are more stringent than those in the home country, and when such exposure varies across multiple host locations. We theorize that this form of environmental regulatory diversity creates learning pressures and legitimacy incentives that motivate EMNEs to upgrade their environmental capabilities through green innovation. Using panel data comprising 9,362 firm-year observations from 1,088 Chinese MNEs over the period 2008–2021, we find support for our arguments. We further show that these effects are contingent on organizational and institutional conditions, specifically top management teams’ technological expertise and the strength of intellectual property enforcement in home-country locations. These findings advance research on EMNE learning and sustainable innovation under complex global environmental governance.

Taking China’s environmental “fee-to-tax” reform as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to examine the impact of the green tax reform on firms’ cost of equity on a sample of A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2023. The results show that the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law significantly reduced the cost of equity for heavily polluting firms. This finding remains robust after a series of robustness checks. Analyses of the underlying mechanisms reveal that the green tax reform lowered the cost of equity primarily through the channel of “Porter effect.” Moreover, the effect is more pronounced among firms located in the eastern China, those with stronger internal governance, and those operating in a stricter external monitoring environment.