Government’s Environmental Attention,Environmental Protection Subsidies And Enterprise Environmental Protection Investment

At present,China’s ecological environment is under tremendous pressure.To promote green development,local governments pay more and more attention to the ecological environment.As the main source of environmental pollution,enterprises are supposed to carry out environmental management activities.The most direct manifestation is environmental protection investment.However,due to the characteristics of high investment costs and slow economic benefits,the scale of environmental protection investment by enterprises in China is generally low.The provision of government environmental protection subsidies can help alleviate the shortage of funds and improve the initiative of enterprises to invest in environmental protection.Based on this,the relationship between government environmental attention,environmental subsidies,and enterprise environmental protection investment are first analyzed from the externality theory,signal theory,and legality theory,and research hypotheses are proposed.Then,listed the data of A-share listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange were selected as the research sample to empirically test the mechanistic relationship between government environmental attention,environmental protection subsidies,and enterprise environmental protection investment through Wen Zhonglin’s mediation effect analysis method.The results show that(1)government environmental attention has a significant contribution to the scale of enterprise environmental protection investment.(2)Environmental subsidies are partly mediating between government environmental attention and enterprise environmental protection investment.(3)Government environmental attention has a more pronounced effect on the scale of environmental protection investment for firms with lower financing constraints,political affiliations,in heavily polluting industries,and regions with a higher degree of marketization.Finally,based on the conclusions of this paper,suggestions are put forward from the perspectives of government and enterprises,which provide a certain reference for further strengthening government environmental attention and promoting enterprise environmental investment.