Abstract: As an arduous and time-consuming task, environmental governance can hardly bring about a better economic return in the short term, so rational enterprises are not motivated to implement environmental strategies on their own. Given this fact, external pressure from the government’s environmental regulation becomes indispensable for urging enterprises to implement environmental strategies. Based on institutional theory and upper echelons theory, this paper explores the impact of three types of environmental regulation, namely command and control, market incentive and public participation, on corporate environmental strategy, and further explores the mediating role of top managers’ cognition between the two. The findings confirm that command-and-control and public-involved environmental regulation have a positive impact on corporate environmental strategy, market-incentive environmental regulation significantly inhibits corporate environmental strategy, and top managers’ cognition plays a mediating role in the impact of the 3 types of environmental regulation. These findings promote the integration of institutional theory and upper echelons theory, enrich the research results of heterogeneous environmental regulation, and also provide theoretical support for the government to formulate environmental policies and for enterprises to implement environmental strategies.

Key words: government environmental regulation, corporate environmental strategy, top managers’ cognition