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Vol. 40, No. 1, 2026

Co-beneficial entrepreneurship and corporate value creation: The mediating effect of TMT regulatory focus and the moderating role of environmental policy

Title

Co-beneficial entrepreneurship and corporate value creation: The mediating effect of TMT regulatory focus and the moderating role of environmental policy

Author

ZHAO Weidong; ZHENG Yanfang; ZHENG Huixin; LI Rui; WANG Guofeng

Abstract

In recent years, the momentum of world economic growth has been gradually waning as public crises such as ecological degradation, energy shortages and financial tsunamis have emerged. Given these grave challenges, the sustainable development has become an international consensus. In fact, the Chinese government actively supports and practices the idea by implementing the new development philosophy of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared growth, which emphasizes the dynamic role of enterprises and entrepreneurship in the economic transition and aims to achieve a mutual transformation between ecological and economic advantages. It is worth pointing out that these issues are closely associated with co-benefit entrepreneurship, which focuses on creating economic, social and environmental value. Therefore, understanding the relationship between co-benefit entrepreneurship and enterprise value creation is significant to advance sustainable economic development and foster new engines of economic growth. In this context, this paper examines the correlation between co-benefit entrepreneurship and enterprise value creation based on stakeholder theory and neo-institutionalist theory with a sample of 777 listed companies on Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, and explore the moderating effects of TMT regulatory focus and environmental policies. The first part of this paper puts forward three hypotheses: (1) Co-benefit entrepreneurship positively affects enterprise value creation; (2) The regulatory focus of TMT plays an intermediary role in the relationship between co-benefit entrepreneurship and enterprise value creation; (3) Environmental policies enhance the positive relationship between co-benefit entrepreneurship and enterprise value creation. The second part is the research design, which elaborates on the data sources and the variable calculation methods. The rank sum ratio (RSR) comprehensive evaluation method is used to evaluate the scores of co-benefit entrepreneurship, enterprise value creation and environmental policy, and the factors that may affect the final result are controlled from such two aspects as enterprise characteristics and inner-enterprise, respectively. In the third part, the hypotheses are tested. At first, a descriptive and correlation analysis is performed. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between co-benefit entrepreneurship and enterprise value creation (r=0.304, p<0.01), which provides preliminary support for further research and analysis. Then, the regression model is selected by the Hausman test and the F-test for the individual and temporal bidirectional fixed effect models, and the temporal individual bidirectional fixed effect model is used. Finally, the empirical test on the three hypotheses is carried out, and a robustness test is conducted after replacing the components of the main variable indicators. The regression results are consistent with the findings, indicating the robustness of conclusions of this paper to some extent. The research finds that: (1) Co-benefit entrepreneurship positively impacts corporate value creation. It is noted that social and environmental consciousness positively influences corporate value creation, while its innovative consciousness has a negative effect on corporate value creation. Enterprises with co-benefit entrepreneurship in their day-to-day decisions consider not only the profits generated by production and operational activities for the business itself, but also the benefits that these actions can bring to potential stakeholders in society and the environment; (2) TMT regulatory focus partially mediates the relationship between co-benefit entrepreneurship and corporate value creation. In contrast to TMT with a high level of prevention focus, TMT with an elevated promotion focus pursues individual achievement, which is reflected more in the continuous creation of economic value for the enterprise, of which the increase in a particular environment sometimes implies damage to social and environmental benefits. However, co-benefit entrepreneurs with the social consciousness and the awareness of environmental protection will, to a certain extent, incorporate the needs of related stakeholders into the corporate strategic development to enhance their decision-making and obtain a better personal reputation or a higher professional status, thus promoting the creation of corporate value; (3) Environmental policies positively moderate the relationship between co-benefit entrepreneurship and corporate value creation. In order to promote macroeconomic sustainability, the government will issue a series of environmental policies to restrain the production and operation of enterprises that may cause harm to society and the environment. It will also provide policy support or financial subsidies for enterprises whose behavior is conducive to cleaner production or green development, so as to externally help in the implementation and transformation of co-benefit entrepreneurship within enterprises and new value creation within enterprises. Thus, it can be concluded that taking co-benefit entrepreneurship as a corporate culture can standardize the behavior of enterprises and employees in the form of an informal system, which can better help enterprises realize their economic, social, and environmental value creation objectives at the same time. Meanwhile, for enterprises with a corporate culture of co-benefit entrepreneurship, the emphasis on safety, responsibility, and consideration of the interests of all parties in the high-defense-focused TMT can be better integrated with the social and environmental awareness of co-benefit entrepreneurship, and thus the utilization of high-defense-focused TMT is conducive to the practice of the enterprise’s development philosophy. In addition, since environmental policies positively regulate the positive impact of co-benefit entrepreneurship on the value creation of enterprises, the government can, to a certain extent, strengthen the supervision of stakeholders in the process of production and operation of enterprises, whether by providing financial support to enterprises or strictly monitoring enterprises at the administrative level, so that enterprises can put various initiatives into practice, improve the business model and achieve triple value creation, thus better serving the overall development needs of the country.

Keywords

Co-benefit entrepreneurship; Corporate value creation; Regulatory focus; Environmental policy

Issue

Vol. 40, No. 1, 2026

References