Research On The Influence Of Environmental Tax On Green Innovation Of Heavily Polluted Enterprises

In the past,due to the heavy industry economy,China consumed a lot of resources in the process of development,causing serious damage to the environment.It can be seen that the root cause of environmental pollution lies in enterprises,especially those polluting industries with high emissions and high energy consumption.Therefore,as long as we effectively solve the problem of environmental pollution in China’s heavy pollution industries,not only can the environment be protected,but also promote economic development and social progress.As a leader in saving energy and reducing consumption,enterprises usually have two attitudes towards environmental tax.One is that some enterprises take the initiative to reduce the frequency of pollutant discharge to the environment through green innovation,so as to reduce the amount of environmental tax;Secondly,some enterprises accept the reality and prefer to pay environmental tax rather than carry out green innovation,because they think that the environmental tax they have to pay is less than the cost of green innovation.So what is the impact of environmental tax on enterprises’ green innovation? If so,what are the mechanisms of action between environmental taxes and green innovation? This is the focus of this paper.In addition,because innovation is characterized by long cycle and high stake,companies often do not have adequate capital and motivation to carry out innovation.Internally,in the context of increasingly strict environmental regulations,when political connections within an enterprise cannot bring more benefits to the enterprise,internal managers can obtain profits or reduce the cost of disciplinary violations through other means,which is rent-seeking behavior.From the perspective of external environment,enterprises’ green innovation activities cannot be supported only by internal funds,which must be supported by a large number of external funds,and government financial subsidies are very important for the development of enterprises’ innovation activities.Therefore,this paper also introduces two factors of enterprise rent-seeking and government subsidy to investigate whether the two factors play a moderating role in the impact of environmental tax on enterprise green innovation.On this basis,this paper firstly collects and analyzes correlative literatures on environmental tax and enterprise green innovation,forming a literature review.Secondly,it defines the concepts of environmental tax,enterprise green innovation,government subsidy and corporate rent-seeking and analyzes the mechanism of the impact of environmental tax on enterprise green innovation based on Porter hypothesis,externality theory,double dividend theory and rent-seeking theory.Again,through the elaboration of China’s environmental tax system and the development of green innovation of enterprises in China,the basic judgment of the impact of environmental tax on enterprise green innovation is formed,and three research hypotheses are proposed.At last,the heavy pollution industry enterprises of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from2015 to 2020 were selected as the research object,and corresponding models were established for empirical research.The results show that environmental tax has an inverted U-shaped effect on the green innovation of heavy polluting enterprises.In the mechanism of environmental tax on green innovation of heavy polluting enterprises,government subsidy and enterprise rent-seeking play a moderating role.Further heterogeneity analysis of property rights and enterprise location factors shows that environmental tax has a more significant impact on green innovation of state-owned enterprises than non-state-owned enterprises,and the impact of environmental tax on green innovation of state-owned enterprises is more significant.Finally,the robustness test is carried out by replacing the measure index of enterprise green innovation,and all the hypotheses pass the test.In order to make better use of environmental tax policy to promote the green innovation level of heavy pollution enterprises,this paper puts forward policy suggestions from two aspects.From the enterprise level,we should change the idea,carry on green innovation actively,avoid rent-seeking behavior,actively improve the information disclosure mechanism in the process of green innovation and pay attention to the introduction of talent technology,etc.At the government level,it is essential to enhance the environmental protection tax system,strengthen its own capacity building,increase government subsidies and set up special subsidy projects,and strengthen the construction of financial market to alleviate the financing difficulties of enterprises.