Abstract: Family enterprises are regarded as the main body of private economy; how their succession affects the innovation transformation has always been the focus of many scholars. Different from previous literatures which analyzed the impact of inter-generational transition on enterprise innovative investment from the perspective of family emotion goal and the way of the second generation successor, this paper combines the identity attributes of the successors and introduces the organizational identification theory to examine respectively the impact of“how to succeed”and“to whose succession” on enterprise innovative investment from the perspective of focusing on the succession mode. It also explores the actual power of the family member who succeeds and the moderating effect of the salary of non-family member who succeed. The results of the empirical analysis based on the listed family enterprises from 2008 to 2019 show that: (1) compared with“airborne”succession, the promotion succession is more conducive to the innovative investment of enterprises after the succession; (2) the difference of successor's identity attributes will have different moderating effects on the succession modes, the successor being a family member will enhance the promotion effect of the promotion mode on innovative investment; (3) the different identities of successors will further moderate the impact of the succession mode on the innovation in different situation. If the successor is a family member, with the increase of actual power, the sense of identity brought about by the promotion system will have a more powerful promoting effect on innovation; similarly, for the successors who are non-family members, the increase of salary will increase their willingness to take risks.

Key words: family business, succession mode, identity attributes, innovative investment