As an important component of corporate governance mechanism, equity compensation has been regarded as a long-term incentive mechanism that can alleviate the agency problem between shareholders and managers, and consequently enhance corporate performance. Although tremendous effort has been directed toward characterizing the relationship between equity incentive and corporate performance, the empirical findings still remain inconsistent. There are two sides and two shapes to this theoretical argument: positive or negative correlations and linear or nonlinear correlations. Empirical evidence has also demonstrated uncertain findings on the effects of equity incentives. However, most empirical studies to date have been done from the perspective of traditional principle-agent theory and predominantly focused on the direct effect of equity incentive on corporate performance without considering the more important and fundamental context factors behind the relationship — the institutional environment within which firms operate. According to institutional theories, all organizations are, to some extent, embedded in the institutional environment and the firm's strategic choices and behavior consequences are largely affected by different institutional environments. As an important governance mechanism, equity incentive is born within specific institutional environment. Hence, the effect of equity incentive is inevitably subjected to the constraint and influence of heterogeneous institutional environment. This is particularly the case in China, where the economy is in the process of transition and the institutional environment is prominently characterized by excessive government intervention and imperfect market competition mechanism, which may significantly differ from those of developed countries and have a profound impact on the effects of equity incentive. This study adopts an integrated framework that employs both agency and institutional theories as analytical lenses to examine the impact of equity incentive on corporate performance, and, more importantly, how different dimensions of institutional environment, such as state-owned controlling and product market competition influences the performance implications of equity incentive. The empirical results show that: (1) as a whole, equity incentive has incentive effects and can significantly increase corporate performance. (2) State-owned controlling impairs the effects of equity incentive. Compared with non-state controlled enterprises, equity incentive exerts no significant effects on state-owned enterprises. (3) Product market competition has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between equity incentive and corporate performance. The higher the degree of competition, the more significant equity incentive effects will be. (4) Product market competition can enhance the relationship between the equity incentive and corporate performance of state-owned enterprises. In the samples of state-owned enterprises with higher degrees of competition, equity incentive shows significant incentive effects. This paper indicates that the institutional environment is an important premise of equity incentive's effectiveness. Deepening the reform of the state-owned enterprises' property rights and improving the competition of product market is the key to improving the effects of equity incentive. Compared with previous studies, this study contributes to the literature in the following aspects: (1) Integrating agency theory with institutional analysis and combining with specific institutional environment situation in China, we extend the existing literature by investigating how institutional environment influences the effects of equity incentive, which provides a useful research perspective for clarifying the relationship between equity incentive and corporate performance and uncover the ″black box″ of the implementation mechanism of equity incentive effect. (2) In order to guarantee sample sizes, previous studies conduct researches without eliminating the incentive samples before 2006, which may induce certain noise to empirical research results. The research findings in this paper are more reliable regardless of incentive samples of listed companies before 2006. (3) Securities regulatory commission employs a strict screening mechanism on the qualification for the implementation of equity incentives. As a consequence, firms with better performance and governance structure may self-select granting equity incentives, which may give rise to a serious problem of sample selection bias. This paper uses propensity score matching as a main identification strategy, which can, to the largest extent, overcome the endogeneity problem caused by sample selection bias and reach a more robust conclusion.