As the Environmental Protection Law was revised and media public opinion supervise them, enterprises need to not only undertake more environmental protection responsibilities but also alleviate the contradiction between development and environment. By applying a multiple regression model, this paper studies the impact of air pollution on the management behavior of enterprises using the panel data of China’s A-share polluting enterprises listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets between 2014 and 2019. The results of this study are as follows: First, air pollution produces a positive impact on the behavior of corporate green management. Second, media reports have brought more attention to corporate pollution and increased the positive impact of air pollution on corporate green management efforts. By further considering the internal and external heterogeneity of enterprises, the impact of air pollution on corporate green management varies when the degree of enterprise pollution and the degree of local governance differ. Moreover, this paper highlights the fact that air pollution can play a significant role in corporate green management, while media attention, as a third party, plays a regulating role in environmental supervision. This provides suggestions for strengthening green management behavior of enterprises and building comprehensive environmental supervision system. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-021-16272-5.