Can executive equity incentives promote high-quality development of enterprises? —— Mediating effect based on innovation

Abstract

High quality is the direction of development, innovation drives high-quality development, and interest incentives drive innovation. Existing studies have shown that executive equity incentives can increase the financial performance of enterprises. Therefore, can executive equity incentives promote the high-quality development of enterprises, thereby improving the quality of industrial development? This paper takes China’s knowledge-intensive enterprises as a sample from 2015 to 2019. On the basis of using the LP semiparametric estimation method to measure the total factor productivity of the enterprise, in accordance with the intermediary effect test procedure, the stepwise regression method is used to study the innovation-driven effect of the executive equity incentives on the quality of enterprise development. The study found that executive equity incentives have an inverted U-shaped impact on the high-quality development of companies, with 20% being the optimal ratio. There is a partial mediating effect in corporate innovation activities on this transmission path. Based on this, suggestions are made to share residual income with senior management and build a high-quality innovative production chain.