Exploring the Role of Government Affiliation on Corporate Clean Energy Consumption: A Legitimacy Perspective

Abstract

The massive consumption of nonclean energy has brought serious environmental challenges. Improvement of energy consumption structure has become a pressing issue for governments around the globe. By incorporating both political and social legitimacy into one framework, we theorize and investigate how the two types of legitimacy, political and social legitimacy, work in firms affiliated to different levels of governments and ultimately influence corporate clean energy consumption strategies. Drawing on data collected on Chinese industrial firms between 2001 and 2008, we find a U-shaped relationship between firms’ government affiliation and corporate clean energy consumption. This curvilinear relationship is strengthened by regional marketization and attenuated by the severity of regional pollution emission level. Our study aims to contribute to legitimacy theory, government influence and corporate environmentalism studies.