Government subsidies of new energy vehicle industry and enterprise innovation: Moderating role of chief executive officers' technical background

The development of new energy vehicles has become an important means by which China can continue to grow as a major automobile manufacturing powerhouse while joining the worldwide effort to tackle climate change. This paper uses Chinese-listed new energy vehicle companies during 2015-2019 as the research sample and examines the impact of government subsidies on enterprise innovation, with the technical background of CEOs as an important moderating factor. We also analyze the extent of this moderating role within different institutional environments and corporate ownership structures. The results show that government subsidies can encourage new energy vehicle enterprises to increase innovation investment, and CEOs' technical backgrounds can strengthen this relationship. Compared with regions with better institutional environments, the moderating effect of CEOs' technical backgrounds is more obvious in regions with poor institutional environments, and when compared with state-owned enterprises, the effect is more obvious in the private sector. We propose a list of government and internal enterprise policies that would make use of the insights gained from our research results.