Research On The Influence Of Environmental Regulation And Technological Innovation On Green Total Factor Productivity

Since the 21st century,China's economic growth rate has remained at a relatively high level,but the increasingly serious environmental pollution has become a factor that can not be ignored in restricting the sustainable growth of China's economy.There are many studies at home and abroad that believe that China's economic growth is at the expense of environmental and resource waste,that is,high economic growth is often accompanied by a lot of energy consumption and pollutant emissions.Therefore,the task of realizing the transformation of the green economy cannot be delayed.As for how to achieve green economic growth and transformation,the necessary conditions are to improve economic quality,accelerate industrial restructuring,promote the industry breakthrough technological innovation,adhere to the principles of environmental conservation and sustainable process of economic development.Essentially,it is to increase the productivity of green total factors.Based on this,this paper uses the direction distance function super efficiency model,combined with the Malmquist-Luenberger(ML)index,to fully consider the energy input factors and undesired output factors,and measure the inter-provincial green total factor productivity(also known as GTFP).Then,based on the analysis results,it is found that there is a big gap between the GTFPs in various provinces in China.Therefore,in order to further explore the impact and principles of environmental regulation and technological innovation on China's GTFP,this paper selects the inter-provincial panel data of China from 2001 to 2016 for the following empirical analysis.Firstly,sub-regional technological innovation intermediary effect did test was tested.Secondly,the influence of cross-terms of environmental control and improved technology on GTFP was studied.Then the dynamic panel regression model was established to test and analyze the influence of each variable.Finally,a panel threshold regression model with technological innovation as a threshold variable was established innovatively to study the effect of environmental regulation on GTFP under different technological innovation levels.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The mediating effect of technological innovation only plays an active role in the western region,that is,environmental policies can enhance GTFP through technological innovation of enterprises,and the “weak” porter hypothesis exists.In the central region,the “pollution shelter” hypothesis has not been eliminated,but the relationship is not obvious in the eastern region.(2)The interaction between environmental control and technological innovation seems significant.The influence of environmental regulation has a significant negative correlation on technological innovation in the country and the central region.It has a significant positive correlation in the western region,while technological innovation can effectively alleviate the inhibition of environmental regulation on GTFP.The two work together,within a reasonable range,will greatly improve GTFP.(3)The GTFP lag phase 1 regression results are significantly positive,indicating that the previous phase of green economy efficiency can promote the efficiency and development of the latter phase.In addition to the lag,GTFP will also be affected by environmental regulations,industrial structure,population density,and urbanization levels,and the impact of these factors is significantly negative in the national sample,while there is a positive correlation between technological innovation,human capital level,economic development level,financial development level variable and GTFP.(4)Technological innovation has a significant threshold effect,that is,there is not a simple linear relationship between technological innovation and GTFP,but there are two critical values.Only when the level of technological innovation is within a certain range,the inhibition of GTFP by environmental regulation can be relatively weak;when the level of technological innovation is too high or too low,it is not conducive to the positive impact of environmental regulation on GTFP.Combining the research conclusions of this paper,we provide the following suggestions for realizing the high-quality growth of China's economy: differentiated regional economic development policies,design reasonable environmental protection standards,increase government penalties for heavily polluted areas,increase pollution control investment,increase R&D investment.