The impact of artificial intelligence on corporate green innovation: Can "increasing quantity" and "improving quality" go hand in hand?

Abstract

In the current era of digitalization and greenization, it is of great importance to explore how enterprises utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to promote green innovation. This paper explores the green innovation effects of AI and its underlying mechanisms from the perspective of corporate governance, using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2021. Our results show that AI has a significant positive impact on corporate green innovation, in terms of both quantity and quality. We investigate the mechanisms behind and find that AI enhances corporate green innovation through channels of increasing human capital accumulation, enhancing organizational management efficiency, and improving the quality of environmental information disclosure. Further, we find that the effects of AI on green innovation are particularly pronounced for state-owned enterprises and large enterprises. In policy pilot zones, AI significantly increases the quantity of corporate green innovation while the impact of AI on the quality of corporate green innovation is not significant. Moreover, we find that AI exerts a diffusion effect rather than a crowding-out effect on enterprises' other innovative activities, and enhances corporate green innovation resilience. These results contribute to the academic literature and policy debate on the importance of AI to promote corporate green innovation.