Research On The Impact Of Place-based Industrial Policy On Corporate Environmental Performance

Place-based industrial policy has been one of the key practical items driving China’s rapid economic growth since the reform and opening up,and has played an important role in promoting institutional reform,guiding industrial clustering and implementing institutional innovation.Since the establishment of the first development zone in Dalian in 1984,there were 552 state-level development zones and 1,991 provincial-level development zones in China as of 2018.The place-based industrial policy represented by the development zones is a useful attempt to achieve an environmentally friendly and resource-saving development model.In 2016,the State Council clearly proposed to encourage the construction of green parks in China’s development zones to accelerate the green transformation of enterprises in the zones and improve environmental quality.At a time when green development has become a national strategy,it is important to make full use of inherent advantages of the policy in development zones to promote the green transformation and upgrading of enterprises in the zones,in order to fight the battle against pollution and provide an important theoretical basis and policy reference for China’s high-quality development.This paper analyses the mechanism by which place-based industrial policy affect the environmental performance of enterprises in the zones through theoretical analysis and model building.It also identifies the enterprises in the zones using the state-published list of development zones and samples matched from the database of Chinese industrial enterprises and the database of key survey enterprises of Chinese industrial pollution sources,and empirically tests the micro-environmental effects of place-based industrial policy by combining propensity score matching and progressive differences-in-differences method.The following conclusions are drawn: Firstly,place-based industrial policy is beneficial to the environmental performance of enterprises in development zones;Secondly,exemptions from environmental regulations will weaken the positive effect of place-based industrial policy on the environmental performance of enterprises;Thirdly,the promotion effect of place-based industrial policy on the environmental performance of enterprises is more significant in economically developed regions and national development zones.In view of this,this paper puts forward policy recommendations: the Chinese government should further increase its support for green enterprises in development zones to provide sufficient policy support to promote the green development of enterprises in development zones in China;at the same time,it should increase the transparency of environmental management in development zones to ensure the effective implementation of environmental regulations;in addition,it should promote the improvement of public environmental monitoring capacity and strengthen the important role of social public supervision in environmental management in development zones.