Online sales, as a representative of the integration of the Internet and the digital economy, are an important initiative for enterprises to use the Internet for business mode innovation, which not only changes the way they operate, but also has a significant impact on business behavior, transaction allocation, and information transmission. Whether the new business mode of online sales has coordinated economic and green development is an important theoretical question, but this synergy effect is unclear.

Based on the perspective of corporate green innovation, this paper examines the impact of online sales on green innovation and its mechanism using the unique data on online sales of A-share listed companies through third-party platforms, and draws the following conclusions: First, compared with enterprises that do not adopt online sales, online sales enterprises have higher green innovation, and green innovation significantly increases with the growth of online sales proportion. Second, online sales significantly improve the quantity and quality of strategic green innovation, but their impact on the quantity and quality of substantive green innovation is limited, indicating that online sales enterprises adopt strategic green innovation behaviors to gain organizational legitimacy. Third, the green investment of online sales enterprises does not significantly increase compared to those that do not adopt online sales, further suggesting that their green innovation behavior is an externalized strategic behavior. Fourth, attracting media attention and analyst attention are two important paths for online sales to enhance green innovation. Fifth, the positive effect of online sales on green innovation is more pronounced in low-carbon risk industries, large-scale enterprises, enterprises with a higher proportion of female directors, and enterprises with a lower proportion of advertising expenses.

According to the theory of organizational legitimacy, this paper confirms the relationship between online sales and green innovation from the perspective of consumer behavior, providing a new way to study the key factors of corporate green innovation. Furthermore, based on the perspective of organizational legitimacy acquisition, this paper reveals the mediating mechanism of online sales affecting green innovation, providing a broader perspective for exploring the influencing factors of green innovation. At the same time, this paper enriches the literature on the economic consequences of online sales, which is of great theoretical and practical significance for understanding how online sales promote green innovation and facilitate green development, as well as improve subsequent policies on the governance of third-party platforms.