Corporate green innovation is an effective way to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction. Enterprises’ willingness to pursue green innovation is increasingly affected by external factors. By using a quasi-natural experiment of China’s Stock Connect program, we investigate the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate green innovation. We find that stock market liberalization increases enterprises’ green innovation, especially for state-owned enterprises. We also find that stock market liberalization plays a stronger role in promoting the green invention patents of enterprises whose managers have overseas experience and enterprises in areas with a higher degree of openness. Our mechanism analysis suggests that stock market liberalization attracts the attention of securities analysts and increases managers’ focus on environmental protection, thereby promoting corporate green innovation. Our findings show that stock market liberalization plays an important role in the governance of firms’ non-financial behavior, which has important theoretical and practical implications.

As Industry 4.0 develops, enterprises are investing in the industrial intelligent transformation. Using unique data from Chinese industrial enterprises, this paper investigates whether air quality affects the upgrading of industrial intelligence in enterprises. We find that decreased air quality improves industrial intelligence for enterprises, as enterprises increase their use of intelligent industrial robots when air pollution causes shortages of labour quantity and efficiency. Further analysis shows that large-scale enterprises and enterprises in areas with high economic development are more inclined to develop industrial intelligence in response to decreased air quality than their counterparts. In addition, the results indicate that the intelligent transformation of enterprises can improve their performance. This study provides a new perspective on the impact of environmental issues on corporate behaviour.