3.2.2. Independent Variable

ESG Rating (ESG). All the listed companies were rated as nine by the China Securities ESG rating, and the ratings from low to high are C, CC, CCC, B, BB, BBB, A, AA, and AAA. The ESG rating of the enterprise was assigned a number from 1 to 9 from low to high in the regression analysis in reference to the practice of Lin et al. (2021)13 [8]. The ESG rating increases as the value increases.

### 3.2.3. Moderation Variables

Institutional Environment (InEnv). This paper refers to the research of Wei et al. (2011). Currently, the degree of marketization is often used as its proxy variable to measure the regional institutional environment. Therefore, this paper judged the external institutional environment based on existing research data and the marketization index of the province where the enterprise was located [74]. A larger index and a higher index produce a better institutional environment.

Redundant organizational resources (OrRes). The cash ratio was adopted to determine the redundant organizational resources given their importance in firms green innovation via referring to the research of Kim and Bettis (2014). A higher ratio is simultaneous with richer redundant organizational resources [75].
