Does second-generation involvement promote family firm environmental investment? The China experience

Abstract

Family firms not only play an important role in economic growth but should also be held partly responsible for environmental degradation. Employing normative stakeholder theory and analyzing unique Chinese survey data via stepwise regression models, our findings indicate that second-generation successors did not significantly impact family firms' environmental investment. However, among second-generation successors, we find that successors with international experience positively impacted environmental investment. The propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage least squares estimation (2SLS) approaches confirm our results. As an interdisciplinary study, our research is of great value to the environmental responsibility and family business literature.