Impact of local government environmental attention on corporate total factor productivity: Evidence from 288 Chinese cities

To improve the effectiveness of government environmental attention on resource allocation, this study proposes a measurement framework using text analysis and an unsupervised Word2vec model to quantify local government environmental attention of 288 Chinese cities. We further examine its impact on total factor productivity (TFP) of China's listed firms from 2010 to 2021 using the high-dimensional fixed-effects and panel quantile regression models. The findings show that: (1) Local government environmental attention contributes positively to TFP, with each unit increase raising TFP by approximately 1.4% from its mean. The results remain robust across various endogeneity and robustness tests. (2) As corporate TFP improves, the marginal positive impact of local government environmental attention gradually strengthens, with command-and-control-oriented and guidance-oriented attention generating greater positive impact than target-oriented attention. (3) Regarding influence mechanisms, local government environmental attention improves corporate TFP by enhancing green governance and innovation quality rather than increasing innovation quantity. Media monitoring enhances its positive impact on corporate TFP, particularly in firms with predominantly positive media coverage. These findings offer insights into facilitating corporate high-quality development.