How Artificial Intelligence Empowers Corporate Green Innovation: Mechanism and Evidence from China’s Manufacturing Industry

Corporate Green Innovation (CGI) is essential for coping with environmental challenges and promoting economic growth. To explore whether and how the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can promote CGI, and which types of enterprises can benefit more from AI in enhancing CGI, this paper takes the establishment of China’s National New Generation AI Innovation and Development Pilot Zone (NAIPZ) as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of AI on CGI. The results confirm that AI significantly promotes CGI, especially in the eastern region, non-SOEs, and industries with higher competition or lower financing constraints. Mechanism analysis emphasizes that corporate productivity and Internal Governance (IG) are key channels. Based on the research results, we suggest that promote the further development of CGI by reducing corporate productivity, formulating and implementing policy differently, helping disadvantaged enterprise to unite high competition and low-financing-constrained enterprises together. The research results provide a transferable implementation approach for governments and enterprise to promote CGI with AI.