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This study focuses on CEO hubris and its effect on corporate unethical behaviour—pollution in particular, and in addition examines critical institutional contingencies [state ownership (SO), political connection (PC) and industrial competition] which may moderate this effect. With data from over-polluting listed firms based on the real-time pollution monitoring system in transitional China from 2015 to 2017, we find that CEO hubris is significantly positively related to firm pollution, and that the moderating role of SO is not significant, that PC positively moderates the hubris-pollution relationship and that industrial competition negatively moderates this relationship. These findings contribute to research on the upper echelon theory, institutional theory and the growing literature on emerging economies.