Do Family Firms Care about Green Innovation? Competing Socioemotional Wealth Logics and Local Government Influence

The evidence is mixed regarding family firms focus on green innovation. Using the socioemotional wealth perspective, we argue that family control have two competing logics, stewardship and conservatism, leading to divergent green innovation outcomes. Integrating an institutional contingency perspective, we show that local government environmental attention shapes which logic prevails. Using listed Chinese family firm data, we find that high (low) local environmental attention strengthens (weakens) the relationship between family control and green innovation, particularly when firms are geographically closer to local governments. Interestingly, highly controlled family firms are least environmentally responsive when close to governments with low environmental attention.