With the rapid growth of the digital economy, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has injected new momentum into persistent green innovation. Using data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2023, this article aims to investigate whether senior executives’ adoption of AI technology influences companies’ persistent green innovation and to identify the specific mechanisms underlying this relationship. To improve measurement accuracy, this paper employs the BERT model to conduct an in-depth analysis of corporate annual report texts to construct an executive AI adoption metric. The findings reveal that executive AI adoption significantly promotes corporate persistent green innovation, and this effect is primarily achieved through enhanced data factor allocation capabilities. Moreover, strategic agility positively moderates the relationship between executive AI adoption and corporate persistent green innovation. Specifically, the higher the level of strategic agility, the stronger the mediating role of data factor allocation in the relationship between executive AI adoption and corporate persistent green innovation. In particular, executive AI adoption plays a more significant role in fostering persistent green innovation among firms with higher total factor productivity and those facing intense market competition.
Zhao et al. (Sat,) studied this question.