Does Patient Capital Promote Corporate Green Innovation Persistence? Evidence from the Mediating Role of Information Disclosure Quality

This study examines whether patient capital promotes the persistence of corporate green innovation and, if so, through what mechanism. Drawing on a panel of 21,811 firm-year observations for 3495 Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2022, we construct a patent-based measure of green innovation persistence and examine the role of strategic equity ownership as a form of long-horizon patient capital. The baseline results show that patient capital is positively associated with green innovation persistence after controlling for firm characteristics, industry fixed effects, and year fixed effects. Mechanism tests indicate that information disclosure quality is a significant partial mediator: patient capital improves disclosure quality, and higher-quality disclosure is associated with more continuous green innovation. The indirect effect is supported by both the Sobel test and a firm-level cluster bootstrap. Robustness checks using alternative green innovation outcomes, an alternative patient-capital measure, and alternative winsorization thresholds yield consistent results. Supplementary endogeneity analyses using lagged instrumental-variable estimation and propensity-score-matched-sample regressions support the baseline association, while temporal tests are interpreted cautiously because ownership and innovation exhibit strong serial persistence. Heterogeneity analyses show that the patient-capital effect is stronger among large firms and firms in heavily polluting industries, whereas evidence for information–environment and ownership heterogeneity is suggestive or statistically inconclusive. The findings contribute to research on investor horizons, green innovation persistence, and the real effects of corporate disclosure.