The Impact Of Environmental Regulation On The Performance Of Heavily Polluting Enterprises

In order to promote the implementation of sustainable development strategy,the government has formulated a series of environmental regulatory measures to limit the emission behavior of enterprises.Although research has shown that environmental regulations have a positive impact on corporate performance,different environmental regulations have different purposes and tendencies,and their impact on corporate performance also varies to some extent.At present,research on the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on corporate performance mostly adopts the traditional linear regression method,analyzing the "net effect" of various environmental regulations on corporate performance,and exploring which environmental regulations can help improve corporate performance.However,the government often adopts multiple environmental regulatory measures for pollution control,and enterprises are also constrained by various environmental regulations in their production and operation processes.Therefore,analyzing the impact of a single environmental regulation on enterprise performance alone is difficult to provide theoretical support for the construction of an environmental regulatory system from a holistic perspective.In response to this issue,this article takes heavily polluting enterprises that are more affected by environmental regulations as research cases.From the perspective of configuration,various environmental regulations are analyzed within the same theoretical framework.By exploring the configuration matching relationship between various environmental regulations and enterprise performance,the environmental regulation configuration that achieves high enterprise performance is obtained,providing reference for the construction of environmental management systems.Firstly,based on previous research on the classification of environmental regulations,environmental regulations are divided into four categories: command control environmental regulations,market incentive environmental regulations,public participation environmental regulations,and voluntary action environmental regulations.Supported by Porter’s hypothesis theory,institutional theory,principal-agent theory,and social responsibility theory,a theoretical framework is constructed for the impact of environmental regulation configuration on the performance of heavily polluting enterprises.Secondly,based on this theoretical framework,using 51 A-share listed companies in China’s heavily polluting industries as research cases,two environmental regulation configurations that form high corporate performance were obtained through the fs QCA(Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis)method.Stability tests were conducted on these two configurations using three methods: adjusting case frequency thresholds,PRI consistency thresholds,and calibrating crossover points.Finally,impact path analysis and corresponding typical case studies were conducted on the two types of configurations,and sample enterprises were classified and studied based on the nature of enterprise property rights and the degree of marketization in their respective regions.The differences between environmental regulatory configurations that result in high enterprise performance were explored under the different nature of property rights and the degree of marketization in their respective regions.The conclusions drawn from the above analysis are: firstly,a single environmental regulatory measure is difficult to drive heavy polluting enterprises to achieve high performance,and promoting the "win-win" between high performance and environmental performance of heavy polluting enterprises requires the joint action of multiple environmental regulatory measures.Secondly,there are two types of high-performance driving paths for heavily polluting enterprises: "government enterprise cooperation under public supervision" and "parallel rewards and punishments under market leadership".There are two types of performance improvement methods:encouraging enterprises to voluntarily improve their internal environmental management system through external pressures such as formulating regulations,public supervision,and collecting environmental protection taxes,as well as encouraging enterprises to engage in clean production through negative and positive feedback market mechanisms.Thirdly,the driving path for generating high corporate performance will vary significantly depending on the property rights nature of the enterprise and the marketization process in the region.Command and control environmental regulations play a greater role in state-owned enterprises and regions with lower marketization processes.Fourthly,environmental protection taxes play a more universal role in driving enterprises to improve economic performance,while public participation in environmental regulation is relatively weak.Based on the above research conclusions,the following suggestions are drawn: firstly,for the government,when constructing an environmental regulation system,it should be "tailored to local conditions" and build an environmental regulation system that matches the characteristics of heavily polluting enterprises and their regions.Secondly,heavily polluting enterprises should actively attach importance to the positive role of environmental regulations,actively cooperate with the regulatory actions of the government,the public,and third-party organizations,and promote green production.Thirdly,as stakeholders and ultimate consumers of heavily polluting enterprises,the public is an important basis for heavily polluting enterprises to make business decisions.The active participation of the public in environmental protection can help promote enterprises to integrate environmental production into their business strategies.