Research on the Impact of Ownership Concentration on the Green Innovation Performance of Chinese SRDI Enterprises

Driven by “dual-carbon” strategic goals, green innovation is one of the main directions for China’s economic transformation and upgrading. Shareholders are the main decision-makers of enterprises, exerting considerable influence on enterprises’ green transformation. How ownership concentration, as the main indicator of shareholders’ power structure, affects the green innovation performance of “Specialized, Refined, Differentiated, and Innovative” (SRDI) enterprises is a critical question that remains to be addressed. Based on the principal-agent theory, this study takes into account the two main kinds of agency conflicts from the principal-agent theory. Panel data on the listed SRDI companies from 2019 to 2024 are adopted. The study empirically examines the effect of ownership concentration on the enterprises’ green innovation performance through a Poisson regression model and further examines the moderating effect of institutional investors on the relationship between ownership concentration and their green innovation performance. The results show that ownership concentration has a significant promoting effect on the green innovation performance of SRDI enterprises. Institutional investors positively moderate this relationship. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of ownership concentration on promoting the green innovation performance of the enterprise is larger in small-scale companies and smaller in large-scale ones. This research reveals the facilitating effect of ownership concentration on green innovation performance of SRDI enterprises and the boundary condition, providing a theoretical basis and practical guidance for optimizing equity structure and enhancing enterprises’ innovation capability from the two types of agency problems.