| As an important external variables influencing corporate behavior, the influential outcome and mechanism of environmental regulation on the corporate performance has attracted the academics' more and more attention, but the current related theoretical research and empirical analysis has not reached a consensus. "Traditional hypothesis" indicates that the external environmental regulations will increase the extra cost of enterprise production or extrude the efficiency of potential investment opportunities, thus being detrimental to business competitiveness; however, " Porter hypothesis" infers that the "innovative compensation effect" generated by the environmental regulations can not only offset or even exceed the additional production costs resulted from the environmental regulation, that's why he holds that strict and properly designed environmental regulations can achieve "win-win situation" between "social environmental performance" and "businesses operating performance". Then, is "Porter hypothesis" applicable to Chinese enterprise practice? Domestic scholars investigate the effectiveness of the "Porter Hypothesis" in a more systematic way mainly from the industry level, industry level, regional level, But there is rare literature to verify the effectiveness of "Porter hypothesis" from the enterprise level, especially local companies level, as well as thorough argumentation. For example, state-owned enterprises and private enterprises confront different social responsibility, environmental pressure and the ability to perceive their environment, which can result behavioral alienation when they are faced with government environmental regulations; enterprises from the east and mid-west confront different market environment and major consumer groups, which might also make a difference on the effect of policies in different areas. Besides, there is often a time-lag effect in the effect of the policy. The environmental regulation policy is without exception. Therefore, it is essential to examine the time-lag effect of environmental regulations policies. Based on further studies of these issues, we can further improve theoretical discussion on the "Porter Hypothesis" and provide some suggestions on the effect of environmental regulation policies in practice..Based on the above analysis, this paper empirically examines the indirect and direct effect of environmental regulation on enterprise performance by using the heavy pollution industry panel data of listed companies from 2010 to 2014, and verify the differences of the two effects in different property or in different areas or enterprises. Main research conclusion includes:environmental regulation can indirectly improve business performance by stimulating enterprise technology innovation, both using the total sample regression, property or regional sample regression, that is to say, the technical innovation can play a positive role between environmental regulation and corporate performance; However, technological innovation has different intermediary effects between environmental regulation and enterprise performance in different enterprises from different areas and properties, that is, the intermediary effects are more significant in state-owned enterprises or eastern enterprises than others; the "innovation compensation effect(indirect effect) and the "crowding-out effect"(direct effect) exists simultaneously, and in the state-owned enterprises or eastern enterprises, the innovation compensation effect of environmental regulation can not only fully compensate and even exceed the crowding-out effect's negative effects on enterprise performance, but in private enterprises or in the mid-west enterprises, environmental regulation results in more crowding-out effect.Finally, based on the theoretical and empirical analysis, we put forward some relatively reasonable suggestions from the prospective of government, corporation and society, so as to achieve the goals of environmental protection and economic growth in China. |
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