Agribusinesses play an important role in the process of green and low-carbon transformation of China's economy. It is extremely necessary to explore how to promote green entrepreneurship in agribusiness to promote a win-win situation for the environmental and economic and social performance to achieve the sustainable development goals of agribusinesses. Based on intellectual capital theory and natural resource-based theory, this study introduces green intellectual capital (GIC) and sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) as chain mediators to build a theoretical model for exploring the impact mechanism of green entrepreneurial orientation (GEO) on sustainable performance (SP) of agribusinesses. Through the empirical analysis of 621 agribusinesses' research data, the results show that (1) GEO has a positive impact on SP of agribusinesses; (2) GIC and SBMI are important transmission factors for the transformation of green entrepreneurial orientation into the sustainable performance of enterprises, and play a mediating role in the relationship between GEO and SP of agribusinesses; and (3) GEO promotes SBMI through the accumulation of GCI, which in turn enhances SP of agribusiness. This study not only enriches the theoretical scope of green entrepreneurship research in terms of subdimensions, but also provides theoretical references and practical guidance for agribusinesses to improve their sustainable performance. Facing the increasing pressure of institution, customers and environment, green entrepreneurship, as an important way to provide eco-friendly products, solve environmental problems and undertake corporate social responsibility, has become the development direction of the whole society. Agricultural enterprises not only rely on environmental resources, but also directly affect the ecological environment. Agricultural entrepreneurs must seek for solutions to environmental problems, play an active role to balance economic and ecological objectives, and enhance their commitment to green business and corporate social responsibility engagement to obtain long-term sustainable competitive advantage. In this circumstances, based on intellectual capital theory and natural resource-based theory, this study introduces green intellectual capital (GIC) and sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) as chain mediators to build a theoretical model for exploring the impact mechanism of green entrepreneurship orientation (GEO) on sustainable performance (SP) of agribusinesses. Through the empirical analysis of 621 agribusinesses' research data, the results show that (1) GEO has a positive impact on SP of agribusinesses; (2) GIC and SBMI are important transmission factors for the transformation of green entrepreneurial orientation into the sustainable performance of enterprises, and play a mediating role in the relationship between GEO and SP of agribusinesses; (3) GEO promotes SBMI through the accumulation of GCI, which in turn enhances SP of agribusiness. This study not only enriches the theoretical scope of green entrepreneurship research in terms of subdimensions, but also provides theoretical references and practical guidance for agricultural enterprises to improve their sustainable performance. This study will focus on the possible SP of GEO to provide empirical support for the relationship between GEO and the SP of agribusiness. Second, we propose a mechanism to mediate between GIC and SBMI in the relationship between GEO and sustainable agribusiness performance and open the "black box" of the relationship between GEO and sustainable agribusiness performance. Currently, some scholars have begun to focus on the role of GEO on the SP of agribusiness, but insufficient attention has been paid to the mediating mechanisms in the transformation of GEO to the SP of firms. Based on intellectual capital theory and resource-based theory, this paper further explores the impact of GEO on SP of agribusiness through GIC and SBMI based on the overall logic of "orientation-resource-result" to clarify the path mechanism and fill the gaps of existing research. This paper uses large-scale questionnaire data to conduct exploratory factor analysis and validation factor analysis. The empirical results show that the measurement scale developed for SBMI has high reliability and validity and can well reflect the connotation and dimensions of SBMI, which can make up for the lack of existing research scales and provide a useful reference for subsequent research on SBMI in the Chinese context.
