Open innovation, overseas business income and the mediating effect of environmental, social and governance

Within the context of the ‘go global’ strategy, for enabling enterprises to effectively form open innovation strategies to enhance overseas business income and assume environmental, social and governance (ESG) responsibilities and to explore the importance and operational mechanisms of ESG, this paper adopts a three-step method to analyse the panel data of Chinese multinational enterprises from 2011 to 2019. The results indicate that adopting open innovation can improve overseas business income and environmental and social performance. The environment and society are two critical intermediary channels for the impact mechanisms of open innovation on overseas business income. Based on these findings, we make some recommendations for enterprises and external investors. This research also expands the current understanding of the correlation between open innovation, ESG and overseas operation activities, providing evidence on open innovation strategy for managers and verifying the vital role of ESG in enterprise operations.