**7. Limitations and Future Research**

This study has limitations that provide avenues for future research. First, this study explores the relationship between an executive's environmental protection background and corporate green innovation based on upper echelons theory and agency theory. For example, upper echelons theory suggests that organizational strategic decisions can be viewed as a function of managerial characteristics [13]. By focusing on the factors of the executive's environmental protection background, in future, the researcher can measure the executive environmental background in various ways, such as by combining case studies and questionnaires, to determine the differences in the competencies of the executive's background and their roles. Second, although this study introduces internal board independence and media attention, we believe that future research needs to examine more moderating factors of other supervisory factors, such as managers' knowledge, ability, CEO autonomy, and institutional factors. Third, this study draws our findings from a sample of Chinese-listed companies. Because there are differences in the incentive structure of enterprises under different national institutional backgrounds [69], they may lead to differences in executives' preferences and knowledge, which in turn affect organizational strategy. Therefore, it makes sense to use samples from different countries to test the model.

**Author Contributions:** Writing—original draft, X.B.; Writing—review and editing, X.B. and C.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was supported by the Higher Education Fund of Macau SAR Government [CP-MUST-2021–04].

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


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