| Some developing countries have achieved economic growth through their participation in global value chains at the cost of inefficient use of energy resources and serious environmental pollution,and the discussion of which is more important has been going on throughout the process of globalization.As China is the largest developing country in terms of global trade,there is both theoretical value and practical urgency in discussing this issue: first,China’s participation in global value chains(GVCs)has been deepening.China’s GVC participation level has rapidly climbed from 29.55% in 1990 to 44.49% in 2018(Niu et al.,2020);second,the role and status of Chinese enterprises in GVCs have also changed,and they are gradually shifting from downstream production manufacturers to upstream suppliers,with an ever-increasing position in the international division of labor(Sultani et al.,2020),a change that will have an impact on the This change will have an important impact on the environmental effects of China’s participation in GVCs.Finally,as the problem of environmental pollution becomes more and more acute,Chinese residents are becoming more and more concerned about environmental pollution.The Chinese government also attaches great importance to "pollution prevention and control" as one of the three major battles.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study this issue from a Chinese standpoint,perspective and data.After decomposing the environmental effects of GVCs,it is difficult for academics to form consistent research conclusions: one believes that the impact of GVCs will make the host country become a "pollution shelter",the so-called "pollution paradise" hypothesis;another believes that deep participation in GVCs will have a positive effect on the environmental performance of the host country,the "pollution halo" hypothesis;in addition to the above traditional views,some scholars believe that the relationship between participation in GVCs and the environment is non-linear.The other is that deep participation in GVCs will have a positive effect on the environmental performance of the host country,i.e.the "pollution halo" hypothesis;in addition to the above traditional viewpoints,some scholars believe that the relationship between participation in GVCs and the environment is non-linear,which has given rise to the U-shape vs.inverted U-shape debate.However,most of the above conclusions are based on macro-data analysis,which is somewhat deficient in data basis and model construction,and lacks the binding effect on key variables in the field of energy consumption.In addition,the different hypotheses are only at the stage of argumentation,while the formation mechanism of the trend of the impact of the degree of participation in GVCs on environmental performance is seldom involved in the research.This undoubtedly makes the mechanism transfer study a theoretical black box,failing to clarify the internal structure and interrelationships of the system,and only able to roughly understand the basic rules between the degree of GVC participation and corporate environmental performance from its input and output sides.The environmental regulatory policy framework designed on this basis undoubtedly has room for optimization in terms of relevance and effectiveness.In order to address the above issues,this paper first verifies the impact of GVC participation on the environmental performance of enterprises: this paper uses a micro-matched database based on Chinese industrial enterprise data,customs data,environmental survey data,and patent data,and uses a single-value shifted time-series smoothing method to enhance data integrity,and constructs a non-linear regression model based on this method5.By using more convincing micro data and adding energy use structure constraints,this paper more effectively proves the "inverted U-shape"theory,and further verifies the robustness of the conclusion by using dynamic panel model and various empirical testing tools;secondly,this paper puts forward the hypothesis based on the conclusion of nonlinear relationship--Second,based on the conclusion of the nonlinear relationship,this paper proposes the hypothesis that "the inverted U-shaped trend is caused by the final effect of the upstream and downstream embedding of two opposite directions of environmental effects.To this end,this paper introduces the improved GVC upstream and downstream participation indexes to reflect the different paths of enterprises’ embedding in GVC upstream and downstream,and uses the multiple intermediation effect model to find that there is a compound(parallel + chain)multiple intermediation effect of GVC participation on enterprises’ environmental performance based on different embedding paths,and the upstream participation mode has a positive environmental impact(reducing emissions),while the downstream participation mode has a negative environmental impact(reducing emissions).)and the downstream participation model has a negative environmental impact(increased emissions).The paper also analyzes the intensity and trend of parallel and chain multiple intermediation effects,the range of values,extreme value nodes and effect shares;finally,the paper directly analyzes the effects of pollution performance of enterprises generated by upstream and downstream participation paths respectively,and verifies the robustness of the conclusions by various methods such as quantile regression.Through the study this paper finds that:First,after using the micro data after multidimensional matching,the degree of GVC participation in general shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm environmental performance that increases first and then decreases,and this conclusion still holds after the Utest curve U-shaped relationship test,systematic regression and various robustness tests.Further analysis reveals that the degree of GVC participation can exert a partial mediating effect on corporate environmental performance through the technology level and aggregation degree of the industry;and there is a moderating effect of financing constraint on the degree of GVC participation on corporate environmental performance,and the higher the financing constraint,the lower the improvement of corporate environmental performance under the same level of GVC participation,i.e.,the financing constraint weakens the effect of GVC participation on corporate environmental performance.This means that the financing constraint weakens the effect of GVC participation on the environmental performance of enterprises.Second,based on enterprise heterogeneity,the paper finds that the inverted Ushaped conclusion remains significant after the division by East,Central and West,and South and North,and the threshold to the right side of the extreme value point is highest in the East,followed by the West and Central,which may be related to the accumulation of low-and middle-end enterprise base in each region.The results remain robust after the North-South grouping,but there is no significant regional variation difference;the distinction by enterprise ownership structure reveals that the highest threshold of inflection point is found in the public(state-owned and collective enterprises)economic component,followed by the foreign-funded(including Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan-funded enterprises)economy,and the private economy has the relatively lowest threshold of inflection point;the division into large,medium and small enterprises by enterprise size reveals that the downward threshold of pollution emissions in large enterprises is significantly larger,and blindly promoting the integration of SMEs may have a negative effect on the environmental performance of enterprises;after analyzing by industry classification,it is found that the downside thresholds of mining,manufacturing,and supply industries such as electricity,which are grouped by major industry categories in the sample,increase sequentially.The closer the industrial sector is to the raw material sector,the less difficult it is to achieve emission reduction through participation in GVC,and the closer the industrial sector is to the production service sector,the more difficult it is to achieve emission reduction through participation in GVC,which may be the result of the difference in the ease of overseas industrial layout of different industry major categories.A further breakdown of industries reveals that the majority of industries maintain the same inverted Ushaped findings as the benchmark regression,with some industry segmentation differences.Third,after completing a more comprehensive analysis of the nonlinear inverted U-shaped relationship,this paper investigates the mechanism of the formation of this relevant trend.By introducing the upstream and downstream participation indicators,which reflect the different path patterns of enterprises’ GVC embedding,and constructing a multiple intermediary effect model,we find that there is a compound multiple intermediary effect of parallel and chain-like combination of upstream and downstream degrees on the degree of GVC participation affecting enterprises’ environmental performance,that is,the inverted U-shaped effect of GVC participation on enterprises’ environmental performance originates from the upstream embedded emission reduction effect and the downstream embedded emission effect.The total effect of upstream embedded emission reduction effect and downstream embedded emission effect is superimposed.With the dynamic changes of the upstream and downstream embedded effects,the total effect of GVC participation shows an upward and then downward trend.This conclusion is made by stepwise test regression coefficient method,and there is no hidden intermediary effect that requires Sobel or bootstrap test.And by calculating the strength of the multiple intermediation effect,it is found that the upstream embedding effect is in the opposite direction of the downstream embedding effect under both the parallel and chain multiple intermediation effects.Fourth,after verifying the multiple intermediation effects of upstream embedding and downstream embedding on the degree of GVC participation affecting the environmental performance of firms,this paper further investigates the specific environmental performance effects of upstream embedding and downstream embedding.It is found that the degree of upstream and downstream linkage participation has opposite effects on the environmental performance of firms,with higher upstream linkage participation of firms leading to lower emission intensity of firms,while the opposite is true for downstream linkage participation.This indicates that the economic components of firms belonging to the upstream position of GVC(key component production and technology development,standard setting)suppress pollution emissions,while those belonging to the downstream position of GVC(nonkey component production and consumer-oriented market)increase pollution emissions.This finding is consistent with the theoretical derivation and expectation,and is consistent with the conclusion of multiple mediating effects in the previous paper,and passes several endogeneity and robustness tests.Fifth,by grouping the results by region,we find that the eastern enterprises outperform the central and western enterprises in terms of both the emission reduction effect achieved through participation in the upstream link and the emission effect generated in the downstream link,i.e.,at the same upstream and downstream participation levels,the eastern enterprises have more significant emission reduction effects and lower pollution emissions.In terms of upstream participation,the effect of emission reduction in the central region is slightly lower than that in the western region;the effect of pollution emission in the downstream link is still stronger in the central than in the western region.After distinguishing the ownership structure,we find that the absolute value of the coefficient of upstream participation is higher in the public sector than in the foreign and private sectors,indicating that,in terms of overall ownership,the public sector enterprises have the most significant effect on reducing their own pollution emissions after increasing their upstream participation,while the foreign and The private sector is the second most effective.The private sector,which is mainly involved in the downstream sector,produces less environmental pollution than the foreign and public sectors under the same conditions.In terms of differences in firm size,large and medium-sized firms involved in the upstream link have the greatest environmental improvement,while small firms developing into mediumsized firms are also able to significantly reduce their own pollution emissions.Compared with supporting small enterprises to develop into medium-sized enterprises,supporting medium-sized enterprises to merge and reorganize into large enterprises is more necessary and generates more significant environmental performance.In the process of participating in the downstream segment of GVC,the scale of production and the scale of pollution emissions are expanded in parallel,regardless of the size of the enterprise.In other words,for enterprises that mainly participate in GVC by embedding in the downstream link,their potential for efficiency improvement has been fully released,and they are locked in the "lower position" by the dominant party in the value chain without jumping up in the status of GVC participation,so they cannot improve production efficiency and reduce pollution emissions through management optimization and economies of scale.The difference in technology level shows that there is a significant improvement in environmental performance due to technological R&D,but the effect of technological advantage is lagging due to the initial R&D cost,so we should maintain a stable investment in technological R&D in the medium and long term;differentiating by enterprise affiliation level,we find that there is little difference in environmental improvement between central and local enterprises participating in GVC in the upstream segment.In contrast,the emission situation of local enterprises is more severe than that of central enterprises when they participate in GVC in the downstream link.The innovation of this paper contains the following aspects:In terms of theoretical analysis,first,based on the verification of the non-linear relationship,the mechanism analysis of the environmental impact of GVC participation is distinguished into positive impact in the upstream link and negative impact in the downstream link,and further refined into inertia effect,technology effect,conjunctive effect,structural effect,and aggregate effect,which improves the original mechanism analysis based on the "three effects" framework.Second,based on the endogenous economic growth model and the general equilibrium model of foreign trade and environmental pollution,this paper analyzes the environmental performance of the production chain of exporting enterprises.By constructing a closed model in the absence of trade and an open model in the presence of trade,we find that the different participation paths along the upstream or downstream links before and after participating in the global value chain will eventually lead to differences in the environmental performance impacts of enterprises.In terms of empirical analysis,for one,in the field of studying the nonlinear relationship between participation in GVC and pollution emissions,this paper uses the single-value moving time series smoothing method,the micro data improved by the two-step method,and the comprehensive index of pollution emissions of enterprises based on the micro survey data of environmental pollution,and constructs the nonlinear relationship regression model between the two directly.This deepens the original study based on macro-industry data and directly verifies the nonlinear relationship between GVC participation and enterprise pollution emissions;second,in the construction of the nonlinear model,we use the method of assigning the average energy consumption share of prefecture-level administrative regions and the singlevalue moving time-series smoothing method to deal with enterprise energy consumption data,which to a certain extent solves the problem of missing data on energy consumption intensity of micro-enterprises,and significantly improves the performance of the model compared with similar studies in the past.Third,we analyze the mediating effect of GVC participation based on technology level and industry agglomeration and the moderating effect based on financing constraints,which is a further deepening of the study of mechanism transmission.Fourth,we introduce the improved upstream and downstream participation degrees,construct a multiple mediating effects model,and divest the total effect of GVC participation degree on enterprises’ environmental performance from the mechanism level,and then clarify the effects of different GVC embedding modes on enterprises’ pollution emissions.The two regressions of the upstream and downstream mechanisms are optimized to enhance the interpretation of the inverted U-shaped trend,and the original indicators of intermediate goods trade estimates based on national industry data are sunk to the inter-provincial industry domain to improve the accuracy of upstream and downstream link participation measurement;fifth,the differences in environmental performance of different enterprises are studied for the upstream embedding path and the downstream embedding path respectively,and the partial mediating effects generated by different paths are quantified.Fourth,due to the complexity of China’s economy,micro enterprises face different regional differences,economic attributes,business scale and technology level.Based on this,this paper further adopts a group regression approach to reanalyze Chinese firms in very different economic environments,which leads to a number of more in-depth findings.This deepening of the research perspective will provide a more comprehensive understanding of enterprises’ conscientious implementation of environmental protection measures,a more specific interpretation and verification of the social responsibility theory,social welfare theory,Porter’s hypothesis,and the value chain capture hypothesis of micro market actors,thus broadening the scope of this research area,providing a broader heterogeneous research perspective on the degree of participation in global value chains and environmental performance of exporting enterprises,and It also provides a specific direction for the subsequent policy recommendations.In addition,many improvements and optimizations have been made in the measurement of core indicators in this paper.One key area of focus for research on the field of GVCs is the need to select appropriate indicators to reflect the various characteristics of GVCs.This study will use the World Input-Output Database(WIOD)and the database of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2005 to 2013,the database of pollution emissions of Chinese industrial enterprises,the database of Chinese customs,and the database of Chinese patents to improve and optimize the original method of measuring the participation of upstream and downstream links,and then theoretically It reveals more comprehensively the real division of labor status of micro-entities in different industries,regions and scales in the process of embedding in global value chains,enriches and expands the theory of heterogeneous export trade,and presents the whole picture of global value chains more clearly.On this basis,by selecting typical pollutants that can represent air pollution and water pollution,a comprehensive enterprise pollutant emission intensity index is constructed to truly reflect the performance of different exporting enterprises in terms of environmental performance and improve the accuracy of relevant models in this research area.In addition,this paper also calculates the average energy consumption intensity data of prefecturelevel administrative regions based on indicators such as China DMSP/OLS stable nighttime lighting data,and uses the average energy consumption share assignment method and the single-value moving time series smoothing method to fit the energy consumption data of a large number of microscopic market entities,which to a certain extent solves the problem of large missing areas of energy consumption intensity of microscopic enterprises.In terms of policy recommendations,this paper strictly aligns with the theoretical analysis framework and makes more targeted policy recommendations based on the findings at the theoretical and empirical levels in turn,with the basic framework continuing the two levels and five types of effects constructed in the theoretical analysis-the inertia effect of adapting to high standards of environmental regulations,the technology effect of technological upgrading on environmental performance,the conjugate effect of low-end locking and pollution emissions,the structural effect of pre-defined positioning on environmental performance,and the aggregate effect of factor inputs on environmental performance.The basic framework continues the theoretical analysis with two levels and five types of effects-the inertia effect of adapting to high-standard environmental regulations,the technology effect of technological upgrading on environmental performance,the conjunctive effect of low-end locking and pollution emission,the structural effect of pre-defined positioning on environmental performance,and the aggregate effect of factor inputs on environmental performance.This paper argues that we should raise certain enforcement standards at the level of environmental regulation and administration based on the opinions of the grassroots sector;we should be good at developing new technological innovations and R&D in the export sector,focusing on the development of new technology areas,changing tracks,and participating in the process of setting market frontiers and emerging patent rules;we should resist the pressure of technological blockade exerted by the dominant party in the global value chain.In the existing mature technology areas to make up for the shortcomings,break through bottlenecks and low-end lock,reverse R & D engineering;export structure optimization and adjustment,focus on stabilizing the supply chain,optimize the export market structure,and continue to expand new business models in foreign trade.Pay attention to the use of various multilateral platforms and trade agreement tools to expand and optimize the international trade "circle of friends": optimize and enhance the factor input areas,change the "demographic dividend" into a "talent dividend The company will optimize and upgrade the factor input areas,change the "demographic dividend" into a "talent dividend",make reasonable quality requirements for the introduction of foreign investment,and continuously improve the business environment for all domestic economic components. |
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