When nationalism meets environmentalism: an inverted U-curve linking national sentiment to carbon emission intensity through an institutional lens
Article
Gao, L., Zhang, D., Xia, M., Cai, H. and Yu, X. 2026. When nationalism meets environmentalism: an inverted U-curve linking national sentiment to carbon emission intensity through an institutional lens. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08968-1
| Type | Article |
|---|---|
| Title | When nationalism meets environmentalism: an inverted U-curve linking national sentiment to carbon emission intensity through an institutional lens |
| Authors | Gao, L., Zhang, D., Xia, M., Cai, H. and Yu, X. |
| Abstract | Against the backdrop of rising corporate carbon emissions, managerial attributes are garnering increasing scholarly scrutiny. Utilizing a panel dataset from China’s A-share market between 2010 and 2023, this paper employs an institutional theory perspective to examine the relationship between national sentiment and carbon emission intensity. We reveal a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between national sentiment and carbon emission intensity. Meanwhile, we also find that market competition, emission reduction target constrains and environmental penalties positively moderate the relationship between national sentiment and carbon emission intensity. Moreover, corporate social responsibility and green investment act as significant mediating channels in this relationship. Furthermore, national sentiment significantly influences enterprises characterized by high pollution, low subsidies, or low R&D intensity, and its impact on green patent, encompassing both green invention and green utility models, still exhibits a significant inverted U-shaped relationship. We further analyzed the effect of macro-environmental changes on this inverted U-shaped relationship. |
| Sustainable Development Goals | 12 Responsible consumption and production |
| 13 Climate action | |
| Middlesex University Theme | Sustainability |
| Publisher | Springer Nature |
| Journal | Humanities & Social Sciences Communications |
| ISSN | |
| Electronic | 2662-9992 |
| Publication dates | |
| Online | 10 Sep 2026 |
| Publication process dates | |
| Submitted | 23 Sep 2025 |
| Accepted | 27 Aug 2026 |
| Deposited | 06 Oct 2026 |
| Output status | Published |
| Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
| Copyright Statement | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-08968-1 |
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