Unleashing the power of green culture: Exploring the path to sustainable development performance in enterprises

How does green culture unleash the power of informal institutions to promote the low-carbon transformation of production methods and achieve sustainable economic development? Limited literature examines this from the perspective of corporate culture. This study employs a comprehensive evaluation method to effectively identify "green"-oriented corporate culture and selects Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2021 as the research sample to systematically investigate the impact of green culture on sustainable development performance (SDP) and its mechanisms. The research findings indicate that: (1) Green culture can enhance both financial performance and Environmental and Social Responsibility (E&S) performance of companies, thereby improving their SDP. (2) Mechanism analysis reveals that green culture effectively enhances SDP through the promotion of green transformation, including green technological transformation and green managerial transformation. (3) Heterogeneous analysis reveals that CEO's green experiences and higher social responsibility pressure act as boundary factors that strengthen the relationship between green culture and SDP. This study enriches the theoretical research scope of green culture and provides empirical insights and guidance for promoting sustainable development practices in companies.