Environmental Policy And Green Innovation

Since 2006,China has deepened the reform of environmental policies and strengthened environmental regulations.The national environmental protection "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" breaks down the environmental goals and tasks to local governments which have played an important role in balancing the harmonious development of economy and ecology.Whether or not to implement the national environmental policy efficiently and stimulate the green innovation of local corporations will directly affect the quality of local economic growth and environmental governance.Based on data from heavily polluted firms and environmental policy of provinces and cities where these firms belong to from 2006-2016,this paper uses the panel negative binomial regression model to study the impact of city-level environmental regulation intensity on corporate green innovation,and explore whether environmental regulation intensity affects enterprises of different natures differently and the impact of environmental regulations with different legal effects on corporate green innovation is it different.Through empirical research and analysis,the paper finds that environmental regulation has a significant positive impact on promoting corporate green innovation.The stricter the environmental regulations,the more it can stimulate enterprises to improve their green innovation.For enterprises with different ownerships,research shows that the impact of environmental regulations on state-owned enterprises’ green innovation is more obvious.For companies with different levels of technology,research shows that the impact of environmental regulations on the green innovation of non-high-tech companies is more obvious.For enterprises with different maturity levels,research shows that the impact of environmental regulations on green innovation of enterprises with high maturity levels is more obvious.For policies with different legal effects,research shows that guided environmental regulation can better promote corporate green innovation.The main innovations of this article are as follows.The first is the innovation of the research perspective.At present,most of the researches are based on the macro level like at the provincial or industry level.This paper combines the citylevel environmental regulations with the micro level of enterprises.The second is the innovation of the measurement of environmental regulations.In order to better identify the role of local governance,this article sums up the cumulative number of effective environmental policies of the provinces and municipalities to which the enterprises belong.The third is the innovation of heterogeneous research.The environmental policies are classified according to legal effects.Considering that legal effects are not equal to actual effects,the policies issued at different levels have reduced the legal effects,but the actual content can better meet local demands.Therefore,this article divides environmental policies into programmatic environmental policies and guiding environmental policies,and explores whether their impact on corporate green innovation is different.In view of the current domestic research on the relationship between environmental regulation and corporate green innovation,there is a lack of empirical evidence at the micro level and insufficient research on heterogeneity.Based on indepth exploration,the main contributions are as follows.The first is to further refine the measurement and research level of environmental regulations,considering them at the city level to explore the impact of environmental regulations on corporate green innovation.The second is to provide a strong proof for the "Porter Hypothesis" in theory,and also to provide a new research result on the study of detailed environmental regulation,perfecting the related research on environmental regulation.The third is to further study the effect of the impact in different situations,provide more realistic suggestions for policy formulation and guidance for companies to effectively improve their green innovation so that the government can better encourage enterprises to carry out green innovation activities,while enhancing their own competitiveness.