Environment Regulation, Technological Innovation And Corporation Competitiveness

Sustainable development has always been an important issue of concern to China's economy and society.However,the drawbacks of the traditional economic development model seriously restrict the transformation and upgrading of China's industrial enterprises,resulting in serious environmental pollution.While the Chinese government constantly strengthens environmental regulation,enterprises are paying a price for it.How can we realize the win-win situation of environmental protection and enterprise competitiveness?Neoclassical economists believe that the government's environmental regulation will undoubtedly increase the burden of enterprises and inhibit the improvement of their competitiveness.The Porter Hypothesis holds that appropriate and reasonable environmental regulation policies can stimulate enterprises to compensate for technological innovation,improve their performance and enable them to gain competitive advantages.Based on the contradiction between "Porter Hypothesis" and neoclassical economics,this paper firstly combs the domestic and foreign literature,then studies the mechanism of environmental regulation and enterprise competitiveness on the basis of the relevant theories of environmental regulation and "Porter Hypothesis",and then constructs four research hypotheses according to the logical relationship among them.Based on 3920 panel data of 70 mineral resources listed companies in China from 2009 to 2016,this paper empirically analyzed the relationship among environmental regulation,technological innovation and enterprise competitiveness through a fixed-effect model.At the same time,it also studied the impact of control variables such as company size,solvency,profitability and human capital on the model.The results show that:(1)Environmental regulation is positively correlated with technological innovation of enterprises in immediate,lagging period 1 and lagging period2,but not in lagging period 3;(2)Technological innovation of enterprises in both immediate and lagging periods can significantly enhance the competitiveness of enterprises,and exert the greatest effect in lagging period 2;(3)Environmental regulationis not correlated with the competitiveness of enterprises in immediate period,and will be restrained in the second year.The restraint effect lasts only two years,but it is positively related to the competitiveness of enterprises in three lagging periods;(4)When considering the impact of environmental regulation and technological innovation on the competitiveness of enterprises at the same time,it is found that the environmental regulation has a positive effect on the competitiveness of enterprises in three lagging periods increases from 0.251 to 0.271;(5)Environmental regulation and technological innovation both are lagged.Technological innovation plays a part mediating effect in the impact of lagging environmental regulation on enterprise competitiveness.And the marginal size of environmental regulation on the competitiveness of enterprises is 0.059,and the intermediary effect of technological innovation is 19.6%.These conclusions prove to some extent the existence of the "Porter hypothesis" in China.On the other hand,they also provide a reference for Chinese enterprises to achieve the dual goals of technological innovation and enterprise competitiveness improvement and green development,and provide theoretical and practical basis for Chinese government departments to formulate effective environmental regulation policies.