Government procurement is an important policy instrument for fiscal resource allocation and demand-side macroeconomic regulation,as well as a key channel linking public expenditure with market supply.As China's government procurement system has become increasingly rule-based,standardized,and professionalized,its role has extended beyond public service provision to  shaping firms' production decisions,resource allocation,business operations,and high-quality development.Total factor productivity (TFP) is a comprehensive measure of the efficiency with which factor inputs are transformed into output.Examining whether government procurement improves firm TFP helps clarify the micro-level channels through which fiscal policy affects corporate behavior and has important implications for improving the government procurement system and enhancing the efficiency of fiscal resource allocation.Existing studies have examined the economic consequences of government procurement from the perspectives of technological innovation,market competition,and resource allocation.However,relatively limited attention has been paid to its credit attributes and productivity effects.A firm's receipt of a government procurement contract indicates that its product quality,supply capacity,and contract fulfillment capability have passed the screening process of government procurement.This may send positive credit signals to external market participants and generate a credit certification effect.Based on this logic,this paper examines whether listed firms' receipt of government procurement contracts improves their total factor productivity and further identifies the underlying credit certification mechanism.

This paper collects and processes government procurement contract announcements from the China Government Procurement Network for the period 2015-2024,obtaining 3,022,800 government procurement contracts.To address non-standardized expressions and unstructured fields in procurement contract texts,this paper combines dictionary-based exact matching with semantic identification based on large language models (LLMs) to structure key contract information,including procurement methods,major procured items,and procurement categories.After completing the structural identification of government procurement contracts,this paper further selects contracts in which the suppliers are A-share listed firms or their subsidiaries,obtaining 113,846 government procurement contracts involving listed firms.These contracts are then matched with listed firm data to construct a matched dataset of government procurement contracts and A-share listed firms.This paper treats listed firms' first receipt of government procurement contracts during the observation period as a shock,applies nearest-neighbor matching to improve comparability between treated and control firms,and employs a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of government procurement on firm total factor productivity.To mitigate endogeneity concerns arising from the non-random nature of winning government procurement contracts,this paper conducts a series of endogeneity treatments and robustness checks.In addition,it examines the mechanism through which government procurement affects firm total factor productivity from the perspective of credit certification and further conducts heterogeneity analysis from the dimensions of procurement contract characteristics and firm characteristics.

The main findings of this paper are threefold.First,listed firms' receipt of government procurement contracts significantly improves firms' total factor productivity,indicating that government procurement enhances firms' production efficiency.Second,the  mechanism analysis shows that government procurement affects firm total factor productivity mainly through the credit certification mechanism.After obtaining government procurement contracts,firms' operating capacity and contract fulfillment capability are verified through government procurement procedures,and their future orders and revenue expectations become clearer.This strengthens suppliers' willingness to provide trade credit and deferred payment support,thereby improving firms' credit financing capacity.At the same time,because government procurement is backed by fiscal funds and involves relatively explicit contract amounts,performance periods,and payment responsibilities,it helps stabilize expectations of accounts receivable recovery,reduce long-aged accounts receivable and expected credit losses,and lower firms' credit risk.The improvement in credit financing capacity and the reduction in credit risk further improve cash flow and resource allocation,thereby enhancing firm total factor productivity.Third,heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect is more pronounced for contracts awarded through open tendering and for goods and works procurement,and is also stronger for private firms and smaller firms.These findings suggest that procurement contracts characterized by stronger competition and clearer performance standards release stronger credit signals,while firms with weaker credit foundations and more limited access to resources obtain greater marginal benefits from government procurement.

This paper makes two main contributions to the literature.First,it extends research on the mechanism through which government procurement affects firm total factor productivity from the perspective of credit certification.By incorporating credit certification into the analytical framework of government procurement and firm productivity,this paper examines its channels through the two dimensions of credit financing capacity and credit risk,and investigates the differentiated effects of this mechanism across procurement methods,procurement items,ownership types,and firm sizes.This not only enriches the explanation of how government procurement affects firm total factor productivity,but also extends research on the credit function of government procurement.Second,by introducing large language models to identify unstructured information in government procurement contracts,this paper refines the granularity of government procurement data and enhances the credibility of causal identification.Based on collected government procurement contract announcements,this paper focuses on key fields such as procurement methods and major procured items,combines dictionary-based exact matching with semantic identification based on large language models,and systematically extracts,identifies,and classifies unstructured contract information.On this basis,it constructs a matched dataset of government procurement contracts and A-share listed firms that includes refined contract-level features such as procurement methods and procured items.It thereby extends the scope of government procurement research from firm-level procurement amounts and contract counts to contract-level attributes,providing a more detailed data foundation for examining the heterogeneous effects of different types of government procurement.

Against the backdrop of China's rapidly evolving ESG regulatory framework and the digital economy's rise as a driver of high-quality growth,digital transformation has shifted from a strategic option to a necessity for sustainable development,making its nexus with ESG performance a critical research question.Yet existing measurement approaches suffer from notable shortcomings:indicator methods lack breadth,policy-shock approaches rest on unrealistic homogeneity assumptions,and annual-report word-frequency techniques fail to distinguish textual claims from actual digital practices.Mechanism analyses remain narrowly focused on environmental channels,overlooking the full ESG spectrum.

This paper employs large language models to parse sustainability reports of A-share listed firms (2009-2023),constructing a binary digital-transformation index that captures actual technology adoption rather than mere textual mentions.The model,trained on tens of thousands of manually annotated sentences,achieves 90.3% accuracy and drives benchmark regressions showing a significant positive effect of digitalization on ESG performance.

The regression results based on the benchmark two-way fixed effects indicate that digital transformation can significantly enhance the comprehensive ESG score of enterprises.To mitigate three types of endogeneity issues,namely omitted variables,reverse causality,and sample self-selection,this paper employs regional-industry-year digitalization averages and the Everest Plan policy to construct dual instrumental variables for 2SLS estimation.Simultaneously,multiple adjustments are made by incorporating lagged explanatory variables of one and two periods,as well as the Heckman two-stage model.Robustness checks are conducted by replacing digitalization measurement indicators,substituting Wind ESG as the dependent variable,and adjusting industry clustering standard errors.The core positive conclusion remains valid.The mechanism test,combining stepwise regression and Bootstrap method,confirms three parallel mediating paths:firstly,digitalization relies on computing power and industrial chain synergy to promote green patent output,thereby improving environmental performance through green technological innovation; secondly,intelligent monitoring and balanced production reduce the probability of safety accidents,solidifying performance on the social responsibility dimension; thirdly,full-process data traceability alleviates agency conflicts,optimizing the quality of internal control.

The results of heterogeneous grouping and the Chow test indicate that the ESG enhancement effect of digital transformation is stronger in non-state-owned enterprises,small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),and manufacturing enterprises.The root cause lies in the weakening of ESG competitive motivation due to the natural resource advantages of state-owned enterprises,the lower cost of organizational flexibility and transformation for SMEs,and the high degree of integration between manufacturing production processes and digital technology as well as green governance.Further detailed dimensional tests reveal that four types of technologies,namely mobile internet,cloud computing,blockchain,and  artificial intelligence,can independently and significantly improve ESG,with mobile internet demonstrating the best empowering effect.However,big data and the Internet of Things,as underlying foundational technologies,require supporting technologies to unlock their value.After decomposing the three dimensions of ESG using seemingly unrelated regression,we find that digitalization has a significant positive impact on the environmental and social dimensions,with the social dimension experiencing a stronger effect.However,due to path dependence on governance structures and limitations of existing indicators that do not cover new digital governance models,its impact on the governance dimension did not pass the significance test.

This study offers three contributions.Methodologically,it pioneers a sustainability-report-based digitalization metric,complementing the widely used Wu et al.(2021) index.Theoretically,it systematically disentangles environmental,social,and governance mechanisms,resolving prior disputes and enriching the digital-sustainability literature.Practically,it demonstrates that digital transformation delivers not only efficiency gains but also social value,guiding firms toward digitally intelligent sustainable development and providing governments with empirical grounding for differentiated policy design across industries and ownership types.

The social credit system constitutes a foundational institution of the market economy. As the core vehicle for the digital transformation of this system, digital social credit platforms play a pivotal role in accelerating the construction of a social credit system aligned with the requirements of high-quality development in the new era. The digital transformation of social credit systems addresses the longstanding issue of “information silos” among government departments by aggregating and publicly sharing multi-dimensional credit data, including administrative permits, administrative penalties, judicial litigation, and tax credit information. This process transforms closed government data into low-cost, high-efficiency market signals. However, whether the digital transformation of social credit systems can improve corporate innovation quality and constrain opportunistic strategic innovation behaviors remains an open question. This paper attempts to investigate this issue by examining whether and how digital social credit platforms affect corporate heterogeneous innovation.

Using Chinese A-share non-financial listed companies from 2001 to 2021 as the research sample, this paper treats the launch of regional digital social credit platforms as a quasi-natural experiment. The platforms examined include five categories: municipal social credit websites, provincial “Credit China” platforms, provincial “National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System” platforms, the national “National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System,”and the national“Credit China”website. For each city, the earliest launch date among these five platform categories is identified as the policy treatment timing. A multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model is employed to empirically examine whether digital social credit platforms can affect corporate substantive innovation and strategic innovation.

The empirical findings are summarized as follows. First, digital social credit platforms significantly promote corporate substantive innovation, as measured by the knowledge breadth-based patent quality index, but exert no statistically significant effect on strategic innovation, as measured by non-invention patent applications. Quantitatively, the launch of digital social credit platforms increases corporate substantive innovation by approximately 4.02% relative to the sample mean. These results remain robust after parallel trend tests, heterogeneous treatment effects estimation following Sun and Abraham (2021), placebo tests with randomly assigned policy timings, and alternative specification checks. Second, mechanism analysis reveals two primary transmission channels. On the one hand, digital social credit platforms alleviate corporate financing constraints by facilitating credit data sharing between banks and enterprises, thereby injecting long-term capital into substantive research and development activities. On the other hand, these platforms improve the regional dishonesty governance environment by publicly disclosing credit punishment information and implementing joint reward and punishment mechanisms, which increase the expected costs of infringement and breach of contract, stimulate corporate innovation willingness, and break trust barriers in patent collaboration and industry-university-research cooperation. Notably, no significant effect is detected through the channel of reducing corporate agency costs, which can be attributed to the fact that digital social credit platforms primarily aggregate and publicize external basic credit records of enterprises as independent legal entities, rather than directly monitoring corporate governance or large shareholder self-dealing behaviors. Third, heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the promotional effect of digital social credit platforms on substantive innovation is more pronounced in firms with less access to commercial credit, lower degrees of digital transformation, poorer information disclosure quality, and in regions with weaker economic and financial development. These findings suggest that digital credit infrastructure construction generates greater marginal governance effects in environments characterized by more severe information asymmetry and financing constraints.

This paper contributes to the literature in three dimensions. First, it enriches the research on the economic effects of social credit systems from a “digital transformation” perspective. Unlike existing studies that focus on the comprehensive social credit system demonstration city pilot policy or national-level credit information disclosure policies, this paper isolates the independent effect of digital social credit platforms as information infrastructure by using city-level platform launch dates as the treatment timing. Second, it deepens the understanding of the mechanisms through which digital social credit system construction affects corporate innovation by identifying two transmission paths: resource acquisition and institutional supervision. This finding provides micro-level evidence for how credit data, as a new factor of production, influences corporate resource allocation and innovation decision-making. Third, it provides policy implications for promoting corporate innovation quality. By distinguishing between substantive innovation and strategic innovation, this paper reveals the positive effect of digital social credit platforms in optimizing corporate innovation structure and enhancing overall innovation quality. These findings offer important references for continuously advancing the digital transformation of social credit systems and guiding enterprises to transition from “quantity-oriented” innovation to “quality-oriented” innovation.

The policy implications derived from this paper are threefold. First, efforts should be made to strengthen the aggregation and sharing of credit information, building information sharing and disclosure platforms that cover various entities, unified institutional rules, and multi-department wide-ranging domains. Second, the data aggregation dimensions of digital social credit platforms should be expanded to incorporate corporate innovation data into the public credit record system, which would help financial institutions and supply chain partners identify firms' genuine innovation capabilities. Third, the reward and punishment mechanisms of digital social credit platforms should be improved to effectively exert the institutional function of “punishing evil and promoting good,” thereby constraining opportunistic strategic innovation behaviors and promoting substantive innovation investment.

Financial and economic openness facilitates the optimal allocation of resources on a global scale and promotes the symbiotic development of the world economy.At the same time,however,closely interconnected international markets expose domestic firms to global uncertainty and external input risks.Adhering to the principle of balancing financial openness with security is one of the fundamental tenets of China's distinctive path of financial development,and it is imperative to establish effective safeguard mechanisms throughout the process of  the Reform and Opening-up.In response to external shocks,the government's implementation of targeted economic policies can play a stabilizing role in the real economy and financial system.Nevertheless,the transmission of macroeconomic policy to the micro-enterprise level may entail both lags and heterogeneous effects.The central questions this paper seeks to address are whether firms spontaneously adopt short-term measures—such as information management—in reaction to such shocks,whether these strategic behaviors effectively mitigate stock  price reactions,and whether they generate positive long-term effects.

Extant literature has documented strategic information disclosure behaviors among listed firms.Firms tend to release good news in a timely manner while delaying bad news or bundling it with good news,so as to attenuate the adverse impact of negative information.However,under certain exceptional circumstances,firms may also have incentives to postpone the disclosure of favorable information.When economic uncertainty is high,and firms anticipate the arrival of future negative shocks,they may hoard good news as a buffer; once the negative shock materializes,they release the accumulated good news to offset its downward pressure on stock prices.

Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms in 2018,and taking the U.S.imposition of additional tariffs on Chinese goods on June 15,2018,as the exogenous event,this paper investigates how firms proactively employ information disclosure to hedge against the risks stemming from macro-level negative shocks,and analyzes the economic and financial implications of such strategic disclosure.First,employing an event-study methodology,we examine the stock market reaction to the tariff announcement.Consistent with prior studies,we find that firms with higher macro-risk exposure experience significantly lower cumulative abnormal returns,indicating that the tariff news indeed triggered a substantial negative market response.Second,we test for strategic information disclosure.The results show that firms with greater macro risk exposure release significantly more good news during the event window,and that such good news significantly mitigates the negative effect of the event on buy-and-hold abnormal returns.This mitigating effect is more pronounced among firms with higher transparency and those with greater controlling shareholder ownership.Third,we find that affiliated analysts assist firms with higher macro risk exposure by revising their ratings upward; however,this behavior does not appear to ameliorate the decline in stock prices.Finally,we examine the long-term effects of strategic good-news disclosure.Our results indicate that firms with higher macro risk exposure that disclose good news at the time of the event experience a significant alleviation of financial constraints and a dampening of the downward trend in their contemporaneous operating performance.A series of robustness checks corroborates our empirical findings.

The contributions of this study are threefold.First,we uncover a novel mechanism through which micro-level economic agents respond to external shocks.From the firm-level perspective,we document that listed companies can mitigate macro-level adverse shocks and contribute to financial market stability by timing their information releases.Second,we identify the phenomenon of delayed good-news disclosure,thereby enriching the literature on strategic corporate disclosure.Our findings suggest that,when firms foresee an impending negative shock,they may withhold favorable information to build a reservoir against potential risks.Third,we provide new evidence on the ineffectiveness of collusion between affiliated analysts and firms.We show that analysts affiliated with the firm's lead underwriter tend to upgrade their ratings to help the firm preserve its reputation when its stock price suffers a negative shock,yet such rating adjustments do not generate corresponding effects on market reactions.

The policy implications of this paper are as follows.①Policymakers should adopt a rational and dialectical perspective on strategic information disclosure and its associated positive market reactions and economic consequences.In the face of macroeconomic shocks,micro-level real-sector entities should adhere to a corporate management approach that combines “positive information retention with strategic information disclosure.” Leveraging past experience at the firm level,they should continue to exercise proactive agency to buffer negative stock price fluctuations,mitigate stock price crash risk,and maintain relative stability in both public sentiment and operating conditions,thereby fulfilling their corporate social responsibility to sustain China's economic and financial stability.②Authorities should persistently improve the information disclosure system for listed firms.In refining this regulatory framework,policy-making authorities should adequately consider and appropriately support proactive corporate disclosure as a governance practice conducive to economic stability,while simultaneously maintaining ongoing supervision over information veracity.Our findings indicate that enhanced information transparency strengthens the buffering effect of strategic disclosure on market reactions.In the long run,continuous improvements in the disclosure system will help raise market transparency and thereby advance the development of financial markets.③Against the backdrop of profound and complex changes in the international environment,it is essential to steadfastly implement the policy objectives and guidelines of “stabilizing expectations and adjusting structures.” In response to macro shocks,authorities should progressively refine sectoral industrial support policies,prioritize the domestic development of firms significantly affected by major international events,and provide sustained policy support in diplomatic and foreign trade arenas.Such efforts will help stabilize domestic financial market expectations regarding these firms,and through the synergy of internal and external measures,facilitate their steady growth and contribute to the sound and sustainable development of the broader economy.

This paper aims to study the persistence and asymmetry of financial network shocks and thereby examine the bilateral risk exposure arising from the changes in the holdings of US Treasury bonds due to the external imbalances of China and the United States. From the perspective of global flow of funds, a “Who-to-Whom” model was established by utilizing three-dimensional data and visualized as an international bond network. A new theoretical proposition system was developed, and the Shock Reaction Function (SRF) and Shock Alignment Index (SAI) were employed to statistically estimate the shock effect of changes in US bonds and bilateral risk exposure. Observation results indicate that when China reduces its holdings of US Treasury bonds, the first-order impact effect feedback is relatively strong yet persists for a short duration. In contrast, when the United States increases the issuance of US Treasury bonds, the positive impact effect feedback is extremely strong and endures for a relatively long period. The theoretical proposition aligns precisely with the empirical results, and the reduction of US Treasury bonds has a relatively weak influence on China's bilateral risk exposure. This paper opens up a new field of economic statistics, the most important thing is to explore how to measure flow of funds by the Who-to-Whom perspective, and how to use GFF statistics. The introduction of the price variable established a panel network vector autoregression model (Panel Network VAR), transforming the static “structure” into a dynamic “system” to capture the dynamic feedback and lag effects over time, and conducting a stability test on the model.

The analysis highlights that the global impact of financial shocks depends critically on their direction within the international financial network,rather than on their size alone. Shocks that are closely aligned with the dominant funding and investment channels tend to propagate persistently,while large but weakly aligned disturbances dissipate relatively quickly.

This distinction helps explain why reductions in US Treasury holdings by major foreign investors typically generate sharp but short-lived market responses,whereas increases in US sovereign debt issuance are associated with more durable global spillovers. In network terms,the former represents localized portfolio adjustments,while the latter operates along the system's principal mode of intermediation,reflecting the central role of US public debt in global liquidity management. 

The W-t-W impulse response analysis suggests a clear asymmetry between China's portfolio adjustment and US debt expansion shocks. When China reduces its holdings of US Treasuries,the first-order impact on the network is relatively strong but decays rapidly,indicating a localized and non-persistent adjustment mainly confined to the asset side of China's balance sheet. In contrast,an increase in US Treasury issuance generates a strong and persistent positive response across multiple network layers,reflecting the central role of US sovereign debt in the global flow of funds and its capacity to propagate shocks through higher-order feedback loops. This asymmetry highlights the distinction between investor-specific portfolio shocks and system-level liability shocks in a global financial network.

The cross-border division of production generates gains from specialization but also allows trade restrictions on specific products to propagate downstream through input-output linkages. Unlike final consumption goods,intermediate goods are used in subsequent production processes. Restrictions on imports of these goods therefore affect procurement costs and may alter firms' production arrangements and the allocation of production activities across countries. Anti-dumping measures are intended to provide relief to domestic industries injured by dumped imports,yet protection measures targeting intermediate goods can tighten input constraints for downstream firms. China's manufacturing sector combines deep integration into international production networks with an extensive domestic supplier base,providing a setting for examining this tension. Focusing on anti-dumping measures imposed by China as an importing country,this study investigates how downstream firms reorganize production when upstream industries receive protection. The analysis informs assessments of the supply chain effects of trade remedies and firms' capacity to adapt to supply chain disruptions. 

The central question is whether constraints on established sources of imported intermediate inputs induce downstream firms to locate more production stages in China,and through which mechanisms this adjustment occurs. Drawing on input-output linkages,global value chain analysis,and production adjustment costs,the study develops a framework encompassing domestic input substitution,optimization of the import mix,and constraints imposed by adjustment costs. Firms can source imports from third countries,substitute domestic inputs,or bring selected production processes in-house. They can also reconfigure their remaining imports toward products further upstream. Third-country sourcing primarily changes the foreign origin of inputs,whereas domestic sourcing and in-house production shift some activities to China,with different implications for the allocation of production stages. These options entail costs associated with searching for suppliers,quality certification,equipment modification,and working capital requirements. Whether the span of domestic production stages expands therefore depends on the gains from input reallocation relative to these adjustment costs. 

The empirical analysis uses data on Chinese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2007,a period covering China's accession to the World Trade Organization and its subsequent integration into global value chains. It links data from the Chinese Customs Database,the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database,China's input-output tables,and anti-dumping case records from the China Trade Remedies Information website. These sources provide information on firms' traded products and trading partners,operating and financial characteristics,interindustry input-output relationships,and the products,source countries,and ruling dates associated with anti-dumping cases. Following the upstreamness literature,the study first calculates the average number of production stages that each industry's output passes through before reaching final demand. It then constructs each firm's production span as import upstreamness minus export upstreamness,with the two components calculated using the firm's respective import value and export value weights. This measure captures the span of domestic production stages between imported inputs and exported products. 

Identification exploits variation in covered products and sourcing countries,with treatment timing defined by affirmative final rulings imposing anti-dumping measures. A staggered difference-in-differences design compares firms importing covered intermediate goods from countries targeted by the relevant investigation with firms importing the same products from other countries. The analysis estimates the relative change in production span between these groups before and after the rulings. The baseline results show that,following affirmative final rulings,exposed firms' production spans increase by approximately 7.6% relative to those of the comparison group,indicating that constraints on intermediate input imports induce an expansion of domestic production stages. The analysis of mechanism  shows that firms reduce imports of covered intermediate goods from targeted countries while increasing purchases from third countries. This diversion does not fully offset the contraction in imports from the original sources. Total imports of covered products,imports of other intermediate goods,and the number of imported varieties all decline,while domestic intermediates account for a larger share of total intermediate inputs. Firms also shift the imports they retain toward more upstream products. Import upstreamness increases significantly,whereas export upstreamness shows no statistically significant change,indicating that the expansion in production span is driven primarily by input reallocation. The expansion is weaker among firms with greater initial dependence on covered intermediate inputs,measured using the import share of these inputs in 2000-2001,reflecting the constraints imposed by adjustment costs. These effects are concentrated among non-processing trade firms,intermediate goods exporters,and non-state-owned firms. 

These findings suggest that firms should tailor supply chain management to input specificity,sourcing concentration,and the time required to substitute inputs. Diversified sourcing,testing of alternative inputs,long-term supplier relationships,and appropriate inventory levels can mitigate single-source risk while preserving the efficiency gains from high-quality foreign inputs. Trade-remedy decisions should assess the benefits of protecting upstream industries alongside downstream firms' adjustment costs. Complementary policies should strengthen domestic supply networks through joint testing,quality certification,technical collaboration,and financial support. These measures can lower the costs of switching suppliers and adapting production processes,improve the compatibility of domestic inputs with firms' production requirements,and enhance supply reliability. 

The study makes three contributions. First,it extends research on import volumes,sourcing locations,and product scope to the production stages covered by firms,revealing  changes in production organization underlying adjustments in trade flows. Second,it extends anti-dumping analysis beyond protected industries to downstream users of intermediate inputs. By matching data on firms' imports to anti-dumping cases at both the product and source-country levels,it identifies downstream firms' actual policy exposure and examines how upstream protection generates spillovers through input-output linkages. Third,it combines evidence on domestic input substitution,a decomposition of production span into import and export upstreamness,and an analysis of initial input dependence to identify where production stage reallocation occurs,the channels involved,and the cost conditions shaping the adjustment. Together,the findings reveal a pattern of selective reallocation in which firms increase their use of domestic inputs while maintaining international sourcing,providing micro-level evidence on how supply chain shocks reshape domestic and cross-border production linkages.

Sustainable development has become a guiding principle in addressing global ecological and environmental challenges.As the primary actors in implementing green and low-carbon transition strategies,enterprises play a decisive role in determining whether national economies can achieve their green transformation goals.While environmental information disclosure is widely recognized as a key mechanism for evaluating corporate environmental performance,some firms engage in strategic greenwashing—employing symbolic actions such as selective disclosure to construct a “green” image without substantive environmental improvements.This practice not only undermines the credibility of environmental information but also poses long-term risks to corporate development and societal green transition.Existing literature has examined the drivers of greenwashing from both external factors such as institutional pressures and internal factors such as corporate governance,yet insufficient attention has been paid to executive environmental perception as a critical variable at the strategic decision-making level.Moreover,prior findings on the relationship between executive environmental perception and corporate environmental performance are contradictory,suggesting that the relationship between executive environmental perception and strategic greenwashing may  be  nonlinear.

Drawing on Upper Echelons Theory,our study constructs a “cognition—behavior—outcomes” analytical framework. Within the framework of executive environmental perception,strategic greenwashing decisions require strong information-processing capabilities to anticipate market reactions,navigate regulatory boundaries,and assess the risks of information manipulation,while simultaneously conducting cost-benefit trade-offs. As environmental perception dynamically evolves,executives' information-processing capabilities and decision-making frameworks undergo structural transformations. 

We propose a U-shaped relationship between executive environmental perception and strategic greenwashing,and further posit that this relationship is mediated through four channels:digital transformation,media attention,green technology innovation,and managerial myopia.Using a panel dataset of 1,290 non-financial A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2024,our study employs a two-way fixed effects model to empirically test the U-shaped relationship between executive environmental perception and strategic greenwashing,and further examines the economic consequences of strategic greenwashing on corporate long-term value. The empirical findings reveal the following results:①There is a significant U-shaped relationship between executive environmental perception and strategic greenwashing,indicating that enhanced environmental perception initially inhibits but subsequently exacerbates strategic greenwashing. This U-shaped relationship is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises,non-heavy-polluting industries,and firms whose executives have financial backgrounds,and the core conclusion remains robust across a series of robustness checks including sample restriction alternation,core explanatory variable substitution,and mitigating the confounding effects of national macroeconomic policies. ②Approximately 81.56% of sample firms are located to the left of the inflection point,suggesting that at the current stage,executive environmental perception in Chinese firms still plays a predominantly beneficial “environmental dividend” role. ③The mechanism analysis reveals that digital transformation and media attention exhibit U-shaped mediating effects,both of which are easily exploited as greenwashing tools at high environmental perception levels; conversely,green technology innovation and managerial myopia exhibit inverted U-shaped mediating effects,of which only substantive green innovation can genuinely improve corporate environmental performance while symbolic innovation merely provides content for strategic greenwashing. ④The economic consequence analysis verifies the “short-term gains,long-term losses” paradox:while strategic greenwashing enhances firms’ market valuation in the short run,it exacerbates abnormal fluctuations in revenue growth rates over the long term,ultimately impairing corporate growth.

Our study makes three marginal contributions. First,from a research perspective,it extends Upper Echelons Theory to a nonlinear framework by uncovering the U-shaped relationship between executive environmental perception and strategic greenwashing,thereby reconciling contradictory findings in prior literature. Second,it establishes a comprehensive “cognition—behavior—outcomes” analytical framework that systematically examines four transmission channels and the economic consequences of strategic greenwashing,providing a holistic understanding of the entire causal chain. Third,based on long-term panel data and textual analysis methodologies,it offers robust empirical evidence and practical insights for greenwashing governance. 

The findings yield the following policy implications:①Regulatory authorities should establish graded and dynamic differentiated supervision systems to accurately identify and intervene in the “trap” risks of executive environmental perception. ②Corporate decision-makers should implement checks-and-balances mechanisms and shift evaluation metrics from input-based indicators toward outcome-based indicators to prevent environmental perception advantages from being transformed into greenwashing tools. ③It is essential to focus on the heterogeneous effects of executives' environmental cognition on greenwashing behavior and to implement differentiated guiding strategies for greenwashing governance.

The resurgence of de-globalization sentiments,persistent trade frictions,and various uncertainty shocks have amplified risks throughout global supply chains,making bottlenecks,chokepoints,and disruptions increasingly pronounced. Consequently,supply chain security and stability have become a core strategic concern at the national level. Within this context,customers,as core nodes in the supply chain,play a pivotal role in enhancing the resilience and security of the entire network. Existing research on customer stability has primarily examined the issue from the perspectives of formal institutions and economic factors,including corporate strategic adjustments,digital transformation,managerial characteristics,and external risk shocks. Much of the existing literature is grounded in a rational-contract framework and emphasizes formal institutions and tangible economic factors. However,contractual incompleteness implies that one party may act outside contractual provisions and thereby harm the interests of the other party. This creates a need for informal institutions,such as shared value norms,to constrain firm behavior and guide firms to shift their focus from merely pursuing self-interest toward creating shared value in cooperation,thereby achieving lasting stability in supply-demand relationships. As a norm of shared value creation,integrity culture can effectively suppress self-interested motives arising from contractual incompleteness and encourage firms to move from self-oriented pursuit to shared value creation in cooperation. Therefore,reemphasizing the value of integrity culture is of important practical significance for reconstructing firm behavioral norms and stabilizing supply chain relationships. Yet,the mitigating role of informal institutions in sustaining long-term cooperation remains underexplored.

Rooted in social moral norms,integrity culture emphasizes honesty,trustworthiness,and ethical conduct,serving as a cornerstone of trust for maintaining long-term cooperative relationships. Although extant literature has documented the value of integrity culture in improving internal governance and optimizing capital market performance,how it permeates organizational boundaries to influence customer relationships within the supply chain remains underexplored. To this end,this study leverages data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies for the period 2010-2023,along with their supply chain relationship network data. A firm-level measure of integrity culture is constructed using machine-learning methods to analyze corporate textual information,and its impact on customer stability as well as the underlying mechanisms is empirically examined.

The findings reveal the following three points.①corporate integrity culture significantly enhances customer stability. This core finding remains robust after a series of robustness checks and after addressing potential endogeneity concerns using multiple methods. ②the mechanism analysis identifies three primary pathways through which integrity culture operates. First,it reduces default risk. Through its inherent constraining and guiding functions,integrity culture effectively curbs opportunistic behavior,thereby mitigating various default risks at the source and strengthening customer trust in the predictability and reliability of cooperation. Second,it increases asset-specific investments. Firms upholding an integrity culture typically exhibit a long-term strategic orientation and show a greater propensity to make asset-specific investments for key customers. Such investments signal credible commitments to cooperation and structurally lock in the bilateral relationship. ③it lowers supply chain coordination costs. Through its information-governance role,integrity culture alleviates information asymmetry and fosters open communication and trust,thus streamlining processes such as supply-demand coordination,reducing transactional frictions,and ultimately enhancing the stability of cooperative relationships. Third,heterogeneity analysis indicates that the positive effect of corporate integrity culture on customer stability is stronger when geographical distance is greater,the external environment is more uncertain,and corporate monitoring mechanisms are weaker. Collectively,these results highlight that integrity culture,as an informal institution,can serve as a vital substitute governance mechanism when formal institutional safeguards are insufficient or external risks are elevated.

The contributions of this study are threefold. First,it extends research on the antecedents of customer stability by introducing an informal-institution perspective. Existing studies have mainly focused on formal institutions and economic factors within a rational-contract framework. By examining corporate integrity culture,this study shows that when self-interested behavior cannot be fully constrained by formal contracts,integrity culture can internalize honesty-based values into firm behavior and provide an endogenous governance basis for customer stability. Second,it expands research on the economic consequences of integrity culture from internal governance to supply chain cooperation. Unlike reputation mechanisms,which rely on external evaluations of past behavior,integrity culture operates as an endogenous normative constraint that disciplines firms ex ante and discourages opportunism. The results suggest that this effect operates through reduced breach risk,increased relationship-specific investment,and lower coordination costs,thereby strengthening customer trust and stabilizing cooperative relationships. Third,this study identifies important boundary conditions for the effect of integrity culture. Its positive impact on customer stability is stronger when geographic distance is greater,environmental uncertainty is higher,and monitoring mechanisms are weaker. This indicates that integrity culture plays a more salient complementary governance role when formal governance mechanisms are less effective.

The author previously argued that creating customer value and developing long-term customer relationships are functions of a firm or organization rather than marketing functions.Marketing has three basic functions: connection,matching and transaction,among which matching serves as the core function.The fundamental distinction between marketing and other corporate functions lies in its unique way of value creation for customers and stakeholders by performing the above three functions.This paper further posits that marketing systems (including macro marketing systems and micro firm-level marketing systems) are essentially supply-demand matching systems,with matching running through the entire marketing process.Furthermore,to develop a general marketing theory built on multi-party mutual benefit and cooperation,it is feasible and necessary to apply matching principles derived from other two-sided matching markets such as marriage markets and labor markets to general commodity exchange.On this basis,deductive rather than inductive marketing knowledge can be generated to increase the proportion of “invariant” knowledge within the marketing knowledge system and consolidate the disciplinary foundation of marketing.

This paper defines the connotations of connection,matching and transaction.Connection refers to establishing contact between supply and demand via certain media and channels.Transaction focuses on the transfer of “value objects”,centering on the completion of “this specific deal” and customers’ “immediate satisfaction”.Matching can be divided into narrow and broad senses.Narrow matching denotes the matching of “core transaction objects” or “core value objects”.For example,whether the “software package” offered by a financial software provider satisfies clients’ specific requirements for daily reimbursement,cost accounting,report generation,risk monitoring,decision support and other aspects.Broad matching covers not only the matching of core value objects but also the satisfaction of demanders’ expectations for information,content and experience during the connection and transaction process.Matching includes,but is not limited to: understanding and perceiving consumer needs,selecting target consumers according to the firm’s strengths and strategic goals,namely customer matching; developing products or solutions in response to target consumers’ needs and enabling consumers to recognize and accept intrinsic and extrinsic product value,namely value matching; enabling target consumers to obtain appropriate information,content and experiences in interactions with the firm,namely process matching.

Matching constitutes the core function of marketing mainly for the following reasons.First,market supply-demand gaps or frictions prevent price mechanisms alone from clearing the market,which explains why marketing exists as a supply-demand matching system.There exist trust gaps,cognitive gaps and capability gaps between supply and demand,and matching essentially bridges these gaps.Accordingly,this paper argues that the core tasks of marketing are building mutual trust,realizing mutual translation between two sets of discourses on the supply and demand sides,and achieving the adaptation of products,services,content and experience to consumption scenarios.Second,from the relationship among the three functions of connection,matching and transaction,matching occupies the central position.Transactions completed without matching customer needs,such as deals concluded through coercion or deception,harm buyers and cannot sustain relational exchange.Likewise,connections established without the purpose of matching can be regarded as invalid or low-efficiency connections.In practice,some firms devote substantial resources to customer acquisition or traffic generation yet attract mismatched customers,resulting in resource waste,which fundamentally stems from the failure of the matching function.Moreover,matching runs through marketing and sales activities.At all layers of supply-demand connection,including connection modes,frequencies and media,both demanders’ preferences and suppliers’ constraints on conditions and costs must be considered.Similarly,during transactions,the demands of all parties need to be balanced.For instance,suppliers should deliver products and services in ways acceptable to demanders,while demanders participate in and cooperate with delivery and pay consideration as agreed.Third,matching creates customer value by improving supply-demand fit,reducing customers’ search costs,optimizing consumption experience and endowing products with symbolic value.Fourth,from the perspective of marketing knowledge construction,conceptualizing marketing systems as supply-demand matching systems and constructing “matching markets” consisting of buyers,sellers and intermediary networks at industry and firm levels makes it possible to draw theoretical resources from two-sided matching markets such as marriage markets,labor markets and information search markets.

Based on two dimensions — “degree of demand certainty” and “elasticity of supply resources”,this paper classifies marketing into four modes: positioning marketing,personalized marketing,ripple and hit-product marketing,and interactive marketing.It further applies fundamental principles of two-sided matching markets to these modes.Combined with assumptions regarding market competition and user heterogeneity,the paper discusses the applicability and boundary conditions of the “matching principle” and the STP analytical framework across different marketing modes.Restricted by the theme and length of this article,this paper  sketches this conceptual framework preliminarily.In-depth discussions and more systematic analyses of this framework will be presented in follow-up papers.