Can direct environmental regulation promote green technology innovation in heavily polluting industries? Evidence from Chinese listed companies

Xiang Cai; Bangzhu Zhu; Haijing Zhang; Liang Li; Meiying Xie

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140810

Can direct environmental regulation promote green technology innovation in heavily polluting industries? Evidence from Chinese listed companies

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Dec 1:746:140810. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140810. Epub 2020 Jul 11.

Authors

Xiang Cai¹, Bangzhu Zhu², Haijing Zhang³, Liang Li⁴, Meiying Xie⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Business, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China; School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; Research Center for Prospering Jiangsu Province with Talents, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
² School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; Research Center for Prospering Jiangsu Province with Talents, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China. Electronic address: bangzhuzhu@yeah.net.
³ School of Business, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China. Electronic address: 1705201012@mails.guet.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; Research Center for Prospering Jiangsu Province with Talents, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China; Research Institute for Environment and Health, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
⁵ School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.

PMID: 32750583
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140810

Abstract

Faced with the dual constraints of resources and the environment, green technology innovation has become an important measure to solve the development challenges of heavily polluting industries. From the perspective of institutional regulation theory, this paper studies the impact of direct environmental regulation on green technology innovation in Chinese listed companies of heavily polluting industries by using the Panel Poisson fixed effect model. Besides, the heterogeneity of ownership and industry is discussed. The results indicate that direct environmental regulations exert a strong and significant incentive effect on green technology innovations in heavily polluting industries. Regarding the heterogeneity of enterprise ownership, direct environmental regulations were found to be more significant to the green technology innovations of state-owned listed companies in such industries. Considering industry heterogeneity, compared with labor-resource intensive industries, direct environmental regulation can effectively encourage green technology innovations in technology-capital intensive industries. This study provides a policy basis for promoting environmental governance and green technology innovation in China's heavily polluting industries.

Keywords: Direct environmental regulation; Enterprise ownership heterogeneity; Green technology innovation; Heavily polluting industry; Industry factor density heterogeneity; Marginal effect.