Research On The Threshold Effect Of Formal Environmental Regulation On Enterprise Performance:From The Perspective Of Heterogeneity

After more than 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s economy has continued to develop at a high speed and become the largest manufacturing country in the world.However,the rapid development achieved by relying on the advantages of environmental resources endowment,as well as long-term high pollution and high carbon emissions,have become the key issues that limit the sustainable and high-quality economic development.Therefore,China has changed from the traditional economic development model to the high-quality development model,taking the win-win situation of economy and environment as the major goal of current social development,and issued a series of environmental regulation policies to solve the severe pollution problem.Under the background that the environment pays a huge pollution price and the economic development encounters a "bottleneck",whether formal environmental regulation,as an important means to guide and promote the pollution control of heavily polluting enterprises,can promote the emission reduction and carbon reduction of heavily polluting enterprises,promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprises to high quality,and improve enterprise performance is a problem worthy of in-depth discussion.Considering the fact that formal environmental regulation plays a dominant role in environmental governance in China and heavy polluting enterprises are the key sources of environmental pollution,based on the heterogeneity perspective,this paper takes enterprises in heavy polluting industries as the research object,takes enterprise performance as the dependent variable,takes formal environmental regulation as the threshold variable,and takes return on total assets,return on net assets,growth rate of business income,enterprise competitiveness,regional attributes and political relevance as the control variables,constructs a panel threshold model of formal environmental regulation on enterprise performance,analyzes the influence of formal environmental regulation on enterprise performance in different property rights,different regions and different scales,and explores the threshold effect of formal environmental regulation on enterprise performance in heavy polluting industries.This paper draws the following conclusions:(1)For heavily polluting enterprises,formal environmental regulation has a single threshold effect on enterprise performance.When the intensity of formal environmental regulation is higher than 62.80,formal environmental regulation has a significant positive role in promoting enterprise performance;However,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is lower than 62.80,there is no significant promotion.(2)From the perspective of heterogeneity of property rights,formal environmental regulation has a single threshold effect on the performance of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises.For state-owned enterprises,formal environmental regulation has a nonlinear "crowding-out" effect on improving enterprise performance,that is,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is lower than 34.12,the positive effect of formal environmental regulation on state-owned enterprise performance is obviously stronger than that when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is higher than 34.12.For private enterprises,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is higher than 61.56,the intensity of formal environmental regulation has a positive role in promoting the performance of private enterprises;However,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is lower than 61.56,there is no significant impact.(3)From the perspective of regional heterogeneity,formal environmental regulation has a single threshold effect on the performance of enterprises in the eastern region and the central and western regions.For enterprises in the eastern region,formal environmental regulation has a nonlinear "crowding-out" effect on the improvement of enterprise performance,that is,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is lower than 38.47,the positive improvement of formal environmental regulation on enterprise performance in the eastern region is obviously stronger than that when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is greater than 38.47.For the enterprises in the central and western regions,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is less than 60.95,formal environmental regulation has a negative inhibitory effect on the improvement of enterprise performance in the central and western regions;However,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is greater than 60.95,there is no significant impact.(4)From the perspective of enterprise scale heterogeneity,formal environmental regulation has a single threshold effect on large-scale enterprise performance,and there is a nonlinear "crowding-out" effect on enterprise performance.That is,when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is less than 62.80,the positive effect of formal environmental regulation on large-scale enterprise performance is obviously stronger than that when the intensity of formal environmental regulation is greater than 62.80.However,formal environmental regulation has a linear promotion effect on SME performance,but there is no threshold effect.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions for high-quality green development of enterprises from the perspectives of government management and enterprise management.