How does network infrastructure drive corporate collaborative green technological innovation? Evidence from the “Broadband China” policy

As collaborative green technological innovation (CGTI) becomes a crucial response to the risks, externalities, and coordination failures inherent in green innovation, how network infrastructure (NI) reshapes the collaborative models of corporate green innovation has emerged as an urgent and unresolved research question. Leveraging the “Broadband China” policy (BCPL) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study empirically examines the mechanisms by which NI influences corporate CGTI using panel data on Chinese A-share-listed firms from 2010 to 2019. The findings are as follows: (1) NI construction significantly promotes corporate CGTI, and this conclusion holds even after a series of robust tests. (2) Notably, information availability forms the core mechanism through which NI drives corporate CGTI. The improvements in market and technological information availability alleviate inter-firm information frictions and collaboration uncertainty, thereby strengthening corporate incentives and capacity to engage in CGTI. (3) Heterogeneity analysis yields surprising results: the enabling effect of NI on low-quality collaborative green innovation is stronger than its effect on high-quality collaborative innovation. Furthermore, its impact on state-owned firms, high-tech firms, secondary sector firms, and firms in the secondary sectors of eastern regions is notably more pronounced. This study sheds new light on the intrinsic link between NI development and corporate green innovation collaboration by uncovering mechanisms of information availability at the firm level, furnishing empirical evidence for formulating differentiated strategies in this domain.