Climate change is emerging as a crisis that will wreak catastrophic damage on society. In response, companies are expected to mitigate GHG emissions. The current literature focuses largely on economic and regulatory influences but ignores the effects of informal institutions on corporate response to global warming. This motivates us to examine the impact of culture on corporate green proactivity. We find that the cultural dimensions of masculinity and uncertainty avoidance are barriers to green proactivity and that a U-shape relationship exists between power distance and proactivity. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to document the dynamic influence of national culture on green behavior beyond financial and regulatory determinants. In addition, we use a novel measure, corporate green ranking, instead of carbon disclosure to gauge climate proactivity. The findings provide nuanced understanding of corporate decarbonization efforts and have significant theoretical and practical implications.

气候变化正在成为一种危机，将给社会带来灾难性的破坏。作为回应，预计公司将减少温室气体排放。当前的文献主要集中在经济和监管方面的影响，但忽略了非正式机构对公司应对全球变暖的影响。这促使我们研究文化对公司绿色积极性的影响。我们发现男性气质和避免不确定性的文化维度是绿色主动性的障碍，并且力量距离和主动性之间存在U形关系。据我们所知，本文是第一个记录了国家文化对金融行为和监管决定因素以外的绿色行为的动态影响的文章。此外，我们采用了一种新颖的方法，即企业绿色排名，而不是通过碳披露来衡量气候活跃度。研究结果为企业脱碳工作提供了细微的理解，并具有重要的理论和实践意义。