State ownership

Linguistics

Philosophy

Environmental economics

Microeconomics

Government (linguistics)

Green innovation

Distribution (mathematics)

Economics

Market economy

Business

Subsidy

Emerging markets

Mathematics

Mathematical analysis

Industrial organization

Finance

Production (economics)

Journal of Cleaner Production

Green technology innovation is the principal approach to cleaner production and achieving sustainable development. This paper focuses on the impact of the synergy effect between external government subsidies and internal slack on green technology innovation, as well as the moderating role of ownership concentration in this process. Using China’s data of the high-tech enterprises listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2011 to 2016, the hypotheses are tested based on the fixed effect model of negative binomial distribution. The results suggest that: a) the synergy of government subsidies and unabsorbed slack effectively improves the enterprises’ green technical innovation, while the synergy of government subsidies and absorbed slack negatively affect the enterprises’ green technical innovation; and b) ownership concentration positively moderates the relation between green technology innovation and the synergy of government subsidies and unabsorbed slack with a inverted U-shaped curve, while there is no significance in their absorbed slack counterparts. Moreover, the baseline conclusions are applicable to non-state-owned enterprises, while they differ in state-owned enterprises regarding the property heterogeneity: the synergistic effect between government subsidies and absorbed slack has no significance on the green technology innovation of these state-owned enterprises; and the ownership concentration positively moderates the relation between green technology innovation and the synergy of government subsidies and unabsorbed slack with a U-shaped curve. Thus, an integrated framework of public supported resources, internal resources and the ownership concentration is built to optimize the allocation of external and internal resources for enterprises to develop green new technologies and ultimately promote the sustainability of the environment.

The impact of synergy effect between government subsidies and slack resources on green technology innovation