 Collective empathy could leap through time: War heritage and corporate green innovationHuixiang Zeng, Wenjia Lu, Jian Zhou, Dongmin Kong, Xu Cheng and Luqi Huang Journal of Corporate Finance, 2025, vol. 93, issue C Abstract: The study investigates the impact of collective empathy on corporate green innovation from the perspective of war heritage. Drawing on stakeholder theory and empathy theory, we argue that collective empathy fosters corporate green innovation by generating public emotional empathy toward local descendants of war victims and enhance cognitive empathy within firms regarding the environmental needs of local communities. Analyzing data from Chinese-listed firms in heavily polluting industries between 2010 and 2019, we find that collective empathy significantly encourages green innovation efforts. Mechanism analyses indicate that collective emotional and cognitive empathy serve as key pathways in this relationship. Furthermore, state-owned ownership and formal institutions reinforce and complement the positive effect of collective empathy on corporate green innovation. Keywords: Corporate green innovation; Collective empathy; War heritage; Emotional empathy; Cognitive empathy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:corfin:v:93:y:2025:i:c:s0929119925000768 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2025.102808 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Corporate Finance is currently edited by A. Poulsen and J. Netter More articles in Journal of Corporate Finance from Elsevier |
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