Research On The Influence Of Environmental Regulation On The Scale And Efficiency Of Enterprise Environmental Protection Investment

For a long time,the growing environmental and resource problems have threatened the safety of human life and production and the sustainable development of society.In order to ease the contradiction between economic development and the natural environment,the government has made a lot of efforts to increase financial input in environmental governance continuously.However,the speed of governance tends to keep up with the speed of destruction.The fundamental reason is that many companies,especially industrial enterprises,who are the main emitters of pollutants and the main consumers of resources,lack the initiative to reduce pollutants,reduce emissions,and save energy and reduce consumption.They have not taken up their social responsibilities.For this reason,the government needs to take measures to formulate various environmental regulations to intervene and restrict corporate environmental behaviors and encourage companies to invest in environmental protection.However,there is still an objection to the effect of environmental regulation on corporate behaviors in the academic community.No agreement on the impact of environmental regulation on the scale and efficiency of enterprises' environmental investment is achieved.So we attempt to study the impact of environmental regulation on corporate environmental investment activities based on China's environmental regulation system,in order to provide relevant inspiration and suggestions for improving the implementation effect of environmental regulation in China and promoting corporate environmental investment.We build the evaluation index system of environmental regulation intensity and corporate environmental investment benefits on the basis of the relevant literature.Then we take China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed industrial enterprises as the research object,using the 2014-2016 data to study the impact of environmental regulation on corporate environmental investment behavior(including investment scale and investment efficiency).The paper is organized as follows: Firstly,the background,purpose and significance of the study are described and the main contents,framework and methods are briefly introduced in the introduction part.Secondly,the relevant core concepts are defined and related theories are analyzed.Then we put forward research hypotheses and conduct empirical analysis with sample data.Finally,relevant policy recommendations are proposed based on the empirical results.The results show that:(1)Overall,the quality of disclosure of environmental information of listed companies in China continues to increase.(2)There are obvious regional differences in the intensity of environmental regulation in China,and the overall intensity is still at a relatively low level.At the same time,the environmental investment behavior of China's industrial listed companies is generally in a state of insufficient scale and low efficiency.(3)The scale of environmental investment and the investment efficiency of heavily polluting industries are generally higher than those of non-heavy pollution industries.The scale and the efficiency of environmental investment by state-owned enterprises are higher than those of non-state-owned enterprises.(4)In general,the intensity of environmental regulation and the scale of corporate environmental investment are in a "U-shaped" relationship,and it is in an "inverted U-shaped" relationship with the efficiency of corporate environmental investment.(5)Industry properties and the nature of property rights under certain conditions have different effects on the relationship between environmental regulation and corporate environmental investment behavior.Specifically,compared with non heavy pollution industry,environmental regulation intensity at a lower level has a greater impact on the scale of environmental investment in heavily polluting industries,but at a higher level,the impact on the environmental investment efficiency of heavily polluting industries is greater.Compared with non-state owned enterprises,environmental regulation has a greater impact on the scale of environmental protection investment of state-owned enterprises at a higher level,and has a greater impact on the efficiency of state-owned enterprises' environmental protection investment at a lower level.(6)Internal factors such as financial status,corporate performance,and operating capability will also affect the environmental protection investment behavior of enterprises under certain conditions.Based on this conclusion,we proposes policy recommendations from three aspects: government,enterprises,and social organizations.