Empirical Study On The Impact Of Environmental Administrative Penalties On The Level Of Corporate Green Technology Innovation

Since the 20 th century,environmental issues have posed enormous challenges to the world,and China has also faced serious environmental pollution in the process of achieving rapid economic growth.More and more companies are considered responsible for environmental pollution.In China’s national economic development,industry plays a leading role,but industrial enterprises are also the main source of the "Three Wastes" of environmental pollutants.At the same time,as the foundation of China’s national economy,the agricultural industry is also facing serious soil and water pollution problems.Faced with the severe environmental situation,China is actively exploring the path of balancing economic and environmental development.The government exerts regulatory pressure on corporate environmental pollution behavior by formulating a series of environmental policies and implementing corresponding law enforcement measures.Environmental administrative penalties involve post-enforcement basis and punishment methods for corporate environmental violations and can have a deterrent effect on companies.The effective implementation of most environmental policies depends on their deterrent effect,and the specific content of the penalties also has heterogeneity.The frequency of penalties may be different,and they may be single or multiple penalties;the types of penalties are diverse and may be orders for rectification,fines,or orders to restrict production or shut down for rectification.The administrative level of the implementing authority may also differ,ranging from the State Council to local environmental protection departments.The deterrent effects of different penalty contents may vary,so enhancing the deterrent power of environmental administrative penalties and guiding companies to adopt the correct response measures become the key to solving China’s environmental regulation dilemma.Green technology innovation has been mentioned many times in government reports because it considers the dual benefits of economic development and environmental protection.However,China’s green innovation started late,and the management system is not perfect enough.In addition,the externalities and uncertainties inherent in technological innovation make it a high-risk and low-return venture.This has led to a lack of motivation and low quality of green technology innovation in enterprises,and it is difficult for enterprises to independently engage in green technology innovation relying solely on market resource allocation.Market failure makes government intervention necessary.Whether it is an industrial enterprise or an agricultural enterprise,both have caused certain pollution to the environment in China,but industrial enterprises and agricultural enterprises have different industry characteristics.Industrial production can make the country’s economy take off,but agricultural production is related to social survival security.The scale of industrial production and operation is limited by the amount of capital,while the scale of agricultural production and operation is limited by land.And agricultural production is greatly affected by the natural environment,while industrial production is rarely affected by the natural environment.Environmental administrative penalties may have different impacts on the green technology innovation of these two sectors.In this context,this paper aims to investigate whether environmental administrative penalties in industrial and agricultural enterprises can contribute to increasing the quantity and quality of green technological innovation,and how the heterogeneity of the content of environmental administrative penalties affects them differently,as well as how they differ by industry.Therefore,this article takes the panel data of China’s A-share industrial and agricultural enterprises from 2016 to 2020 as samples,analyzes the impact of environmental administrative penalties on enterprise innovation output based on the fixed effects model,and compares the differences in the effects between industrial and agricultural enterprises.The study has found that:(1)Environmental administrative penalties can promote the incremental and high-quality development of green technologies in both the industrial and agricultural sectors,but the effect on agricultural enterprises is greater than that on industrial enterprises.(2)In the industrial sector,the more frequent and severe the environmental administrative penalties imposed by higherlevel administrative bodies,the stronger the positive promotion effect on the quantity and quality of enterprise green technology innovation.(3)In the agricultural sector,the frequency of environmental administrative penalties cannot positively promote the quantity and quality of enterprise green technology innovation,but the severity of such penalties can.Additionally,the level of the administrative body implementing the environmental administrative penalties can only positively promote the quantity of enterprise green technology innovation,but cannot significantly improve the quality.