The Impact Of Green Credit Policy On Green Innovation Of Heavy Pollution Enterprises

After the reform and opening up,China’s economy has developed at a rapid pace.However,at the same time,the crude economic growth model has brought about huge environmental and social risks.Nowadays,environmental pollution,the lack of energy,and the unbalance of the ecology have become the major factors that restrict the sustainable development of China.Economic development and financial support are inextricably linked.In order to promote the harmonious development of economic growth and environmental protection,the government and relevant departments in China are vigorously developing green finance,trying to use financial means to promote the overall green transformation of China’s economic development.Among them,green credit policy,as the main part of the green financial policy system,emphasizes the green distribution of bank lending resources and supports and directs enterprises to implement green technology innovation,which is a key approach to realizing sustainable development.Among them,heavy pollution enterprises,as the main body of environmental pollution,is bound to be the focal point of the green credit policy.The implementation of the green credit policy has raised the capital limit for heavy pollution enterprises.Faced with the pressure from the special environment regulation,will pollution enterprises be driven by green technological innovation and bring into play the "Porter’s hypothesis" effect? This is the focus of this paper.In this regard,this paper selects Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2009-2021 as the research sample and takes the "Green Credit Guidelines" as a quasi-natural experiment,and applies DID model to investigate the influence of green credit policy on the environmental innovation of heavy pollution enterprises.The mechanism of the effect of R&D investment and credit constraints is examined using the mediating effect model from the perspective of internal resource allocation and external resource acquisition.Further,group regressions are conducted for different property rights properties,regions,and types of green patent applications to explore the policy effects of green credit policies in a micro-sample.The empirical results found that:(1)After the Green Credit Policy was put into effect,the level of green innovation in heavy pollution enterprises was improved,and the promotion effect strengthened year by year with the implementation of the policy.(2)The mechanism test found that the green credit policy increased enterprises’ green innovation funds by increasing their R&D investment and exerted the Porter hypothesis effect.In addition,the credit constraint restrictions imposed by the policy on heavy pollution enterprises pushed enterprises to green innovation,in line with the expected mechanism of action of green credit policy.(3)Heterogeneity analysis found that the policy had a more significant positive incentive effect at the level of state-owned enterprises,central and western regions,and green utility patents.Based on the above findings,this paper proposes that the government and relevant departments should strengthen the construction of an information-sharing mechanism,enhance the supervision of banks’ policy implementation and the flow of green credit funds to enterprises,and formulate differentiated green credit rules to improve the accuracy of the policy.Banks and other financial institutions should standardize credit project vetting criteria,develop diversified green financial tools and services,and play a positive guiding role in green credit policies.Enterprises should pay more attention to environmental protection,increase their consideration of short-term development and long-term interests,seize green market opportunities,and take the initiative to carry out green innovation activities.