Ecological innovation has become one of the important strategic tools for manufacturing industry to obtain sustainable development. How to drive enterprise′s ecological innovation behavior is an important topic with common concern both in the industry and academia. In fact, the entrepreneur′s environmental leadership style and environment awareness play a decisive role in the decision of enterprise ecological innovation. However, whether managers′ environmental leadership can have an impact on ecological innovation, and what impact it has on ecological innovation, as well as its impact mechanism, still have not yet been discussed in depth by now. 
    Based on the theory of basic natural resources and leadership, this paper explores the path mechanism which influence the strategic choice of enterprise ecological innovation from the perspective of executives′ cognition, and try to construct a psychological decision-making framework of "environmental leadership → executives′ perception → ecological innovation behavior", in order to better explain the impact effect of executives′ environmental leadership to ecological innovation with different strategic attitudes (passive ecological innovation and proactive ecological innovation), and the different impacting paths. 
   The sample enterprises are from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong and Fujian. Based on a questionnaire survey of 248 manufacturing enterprises, this paper uses structural equation model to compare the fittings effect of several models : without mediating effect, complete mediating effect and partial mediating effect, testifies the mediating effects of managers′ perception: opportunity perception and threat perception, on the effect of environmental leadership to enterprise′s proactive and passive ecological innovation, respectively. The results show that environmental leadership has a significant impact on proactive ecological innovation, while the impact on passive ecological innovation has not been testified. Opportunity perception of executives has a partial mediating effect on the relationship of environmental leadership and proactive eco-innovation, while manager′s threat perception has a significant mediating effect on the relationship of environmental leadership and reactive eco-innovation. Because environmental leadership has no significant impact on enterprises′ passive ecological innovation behavior, the impact of environmental leadership and threat perception on passive ecological innovation is significant when threat perception is added as a mediate variable. That means threat perception is a distal mediator of the relationship between environmental leadership and passive ecological innovation.
    Management inspiration: This study finds that environmental leadership can positively predict enterprises′ proactive ecological innovation behavior, which means that organization should examine their environmental responsibility consciousness when choosing managers, especially senior managers. The entrepreneurs should face up to the environmental problems, take environmental problems into the framework of enterprise strategy, and find new opportunities, which not only bring value to the development of enterprises, but also have a positive impact on the natural environment. Policy inspiration: The government can continue to cultivate and strengthen entrepreneurs′ awareness of environmental protection by further strengthening environmental protection propaganda. Enterprise managers′ perception of environmental protection also has a process of transformation and improvement. The government can motivate the managers of enterprises by improving the performance appraisal system of senior managers, especially in large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, adding indicators such as "environmental investment performance" and "environmental contribution rate".