The road to sustainable development: Results of the differentiated choice of corporate environmental strategy

Abstract

Finding a reasonable and efficient sustainable development path is more important for enterprises than emphasizing environmental protection. Corporate environmental strategy, green innovation and corporate sustainability are selected as representative variables to explore the possibility of Chinese heavily polluting enterprises to achieve sustainable development. Through questionnaires and regression analysis, our study shows that the different effects of corporate environmental strategies on corporate sustainability are only reflected in economic dimension, and that the mediating role of green process innovation between reactive environmental strategy and environmental sustainability is more significant than that of green product innovation. This study has made contributions to research in the field of sustainable development, discussing the role of corporate environmental strategies and green innovation in environmental protection, and exploring effective paths to achieve sustainable development. In addition, the combination of environmental strategies and green innovation among different types can also enable managers to plan sustainable development paths more reasonably.