Environmental Regulation,innovation Ability And Green Total Factor Productivity

With the rapid development of China’s economy,the pressure on resources and the environment is becoming increasingly serious.The extensive economic development model that only pays attention to economic aggregate and neglects resource conservation and environmental protection in the past cannot be sustained.It is urgent to change to the intensive development model with high quality and high efficiency.GTFP is an important basis to measure the quality of regional economic development.Therefore,rational use of environmental regulation tools to stimulate innovation drivers is an effective way to improve GTFP.Based on this,it is very important to explore the effect path of environmental regulation and innovation ability on GTFP to promote the green transformation of China’s economy.Based on the SBM directional distance function and the GML index,this paper measures the green total factor productivity(GTFP)and its decomposition items of 30 provinces in China from2005 to 2018,and conducts a detailed analysis from both the temporal evolution trend and the spatial differentiation characteristics.This paper constructs a regional innovation capability evaluation index system to measure the innovation capability of each province,dividing environmental regulations into command control type,market incentive type and voluntary awareness type.This paper empirically analyzes the impact of three types of environmental regulations,innovation capabilities,and their interactions on GTFP through the establishment of a dynamic space Durbin model,and divides the national sample into four major regions: East,Central,West,and Northeast,to explore the regional heterogeneity of impact.Finally,relevant policy suggestions are put forward according to the research conclusions.The results show that:(1)During the sample period,China’s GTFP showed a downward trend,with an average annual growth rate of-0.54%.From the perspective of decomposition term,technological progress is the leading factor driving the GTFP improvement.The spatial distribution of GTFP showed the "Matthew effect",and only the eastern region achieved positive growth.(2)During the sample period,China’s regional innovation ability improved steadily and showed obvious regional agglomeration.Among them,the five provinces with the most outstanding innovation capacity are Jiangsu,Guangdong,Beijing,Zhejiang and Shandong,all concentrated in the eastern region.(3)At the national level,the direct effect coefficient of innovation capability on GTFP is significantly positive,but the spatial spillover effect coefficient is negative and not significant;Among the three types of environmental regulations,command control type and market incentive type have positive direct and spatial spillover effects on the GTFP,and market incentive type has more obvious promoting effect,while voluntary consciousness type environmental regulation has no significant effect.(4)Environmental regulation and innovation ability have a synergistic effect on GTFP,which is heterogeneous.Command control type environmental regulation positively regulates the impact of innovation ability on GTFP from both direct effects and spatial spillover effects,market incentives type only positively regulates the impact of innovation capabilities on GTFP from the perspective of direct effects,while voluntary conscious type and innovation capabilities do not show synergistic effects.(5)At the regional level,innovation ability can significantly promote the improvement of GTFP in the eastern and central regions,but it has no obvious effect in the western and northeastern regions.Command control type environmental regulation promotes the GTFP in the central,western and northeastern regions with a significant level of 5%,but has no significant effect on the eastern region.Market incentive type has a significant positive impact on the GTFP of the four regions.Voluntary conscious type has a positive impact on GTFP in the eastern region with a significant level of 5%,and inhibits the increase of GTFP in the northeastern region with a significant level of 10%,but has no significant impact on the central and western regions.