ABSTRACT This paper examines how public pro‐environmental behaviour influences corporate green performance. We construct a unique city‐level measurement of public pro‐environmental behaviour using the dataset from Ant Forest, an online welfare project by Alipay that encourages users to adopt low‐carbon behaviours. Based on a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2018 to 2019, this paper finds that public pro‐environmental behaviour has a significant influence on corporate green performance, and this impact is more pronounced in larger companies, those with less heavy pollution and those with political connections. Public pro‐environmental behaviour promotes corporate green performance by increasing government attention to environmental protection. Additionally, in cities with strong pro‐environmental behaviour, improvements in corporate green performance facilitate green innovation among enterprises, enhancing their green innovation performance. Overall, our findings offer new insights into how public pro‐environmental perceptions influence firm‐level sustainability practices.
Jiang et al. (2026) studied this question.
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