Research On The Impact Of China’s Environmental Protection Tax On The Innovation Of Green Technology In Enterprises

The 19 th Party Congress used the term high-quality development for the first time,implying that China has shifted from a stage of rapid development to a stage of high-quality development.Ecological and environmental protection is one of the main tasks of China’s high-quality development stage.To address environmental issues,China has introduced a series of environmental protection policies,and the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China came into effect on 1 January 2018,which is an effective measure for the government to promote environmental protection policies.The purpose of implementing the environmental protection tax is not only to combat environmental pollution and conserve resources,but also to encourage green technological innovation through the reverse constraint and positive incentive mechanism of "more emission,more payment,less emission,less payment,no emission,no payment".The positive environmental externalities of green technology innovation are widely recognised.Therefore,it is very important to establish an interlinked and mutually beneficial environmental protection mechanism between environmental protection tax and green technology innovation.Based on the above background,we firstly comb through the literature related to green technological innovation and,based on existing research and theory,explain the mechanism of the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprises’ green technological innovation,including the mediating role played by R&D investment between the two.Then it elaborates on the implementation of environmental protection tax and the current situation of environmental pollution control,and analyses the current situation of green technological innovation in China from two perspectives.In the empirical part,using the data of listed companies from 2011-2020 as a sample,based on the implementation of environmental protection tax as a policy influence,the data are regressed using double difference method,and the robustness of the results are tested using propensity score matching,excluding other competing influences and replacing the explanatory variables,and then in analysing the heterogeneity of factors such as firm size row,property rights and region.And based on the test results,targeted recommendations are made.This paper examines how the environmental tax affects firms’ green technological innovation,taking into account the mediating role of R&D investment,and discusses firms’ choices between investing in pollution control and investing in technological innovation,in order to provide a basis for improving the environmental tax system and for firms’ environmental decisions and choices.Based on the sample data of listed companies,this paper uses the double difference method to test the impact of the implementation of environmental protection tax on green technology innovation,and further uses the mesomeric effect model to study the impact mechanism of environmental protection tax on green technology innovation.The results of the study show that:(1)the implementation of the environmental protection tax inhibits green technological innovation in heavily polluting enterprises and does not incentivise them to increase their green technological innovation.(2)Enterprises’ R&D investment plays a partially mediating role between the two,i.e.the introduction of environmental taxes increases the environmental costs of enterprises and reduces the funds available for R&D investment,thus hindering green technological innovation.At the same time,the introduction of the environmental tax forced enterprises to increase their investment in pollution reduction,but the study found that the increased investment had a crowding-out effect on investment in green R&D,crowding out resources for green technological innovation.(3)Through further analysis,it was found that in terms of differences in enterprise size,environmental protection tax had a negative impact on green technology innovation for both large and small enterprises,but the impact was relatively stronger for large enterprises;in terms of differences in the nature of property rights,environmental protection tax had a more significant negative impact on green technology innovation for non-state enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises;in terms of regional differences,environmental protection tax significantly inhibited green technology innovation for enterprises in the eastern In terms of regional differences,the environmental protection tax significantly discourages green technology innovation among enterprises in the eastern,central and western regions,but has no significant impact on the western region.The main policy recommendations are: firstly,to continue to improve the environmental protection tax system and build a strong environmental regulation system;secondly,the government should take a series of measures to alleviate the financial pressure on enterprises to carry out green technology research and development;thirdly,to continuously enhance enterprises’ awareness of environmental protection,attract talents and increase investment in technology research and development by broadening the channels of cooperation in technology research and development.