Will China's R&D investment improve green innovation performance? An empirical study

Energy-consuming right transaction and low-carbon technology innovation: Evidence from Chinese listed enterprises

To decarbonize the economy and spur high-quality development, formulating effective environmental policies to encourage low-carbon technology innovation is increasingly critical. While the energy-consuming right transaction represents a significant institutional breakthrough, its potential to motivate enterprises towards low-carbon technology innovation remains underexplored. To address this gap, our study utilizes panel data from Chinese listed enterprises between 2009 and 2020, employing the energy-consuming right transaction pilot policy to develop a difference-in-difference model that assesses the policy's impact on low-carbon innovation. Our findings indicate that the implementation of energy-consuming rights transaction has boosted low-carbon innovation efforts by 14.3 %. In-depth analysis shows that R&D investment and green agency costs are crucial mediators, with energy-consuming rights transaction enhancing R&D capital and personnel investments by 2.1 % and 1.5 %, respectively, and reducing green agency costs by 1.8 %. The study also uncovers the moderating role of digital finance, which amplifies the positive effects of energy-consuming rights transaction on low-carbon innovation. Moreover, energy-consuming rights transaction shows a more significant effect on improving low-carbon innovation for low energy-consuming and non-state-owned enterprises. These insights underscore the importance of precisely segmenting energy-consuming enterprises and devising customized policies to meet their unique needs, paving the way for a national energy-consuming right transaction market.

Green R & D investment, ESG reporting, and corporate green innovation performance

Given the contradictory empirical evidence on the relationship between green R&D expenditure and corporate Green Innovation performance (GIP), The present research study is a distinctive investigation into the moderating impacts of ESG reporting on this relationship. We utilized a data collection of 3,846, firm-year observations of A-share listed firms in China from 2016 to 2022 from CSMAR and Bloomberg databases. The firm's Corporate GIP is assessed and measured by looking at the total quantity of green patents. Lastly, models with multiple regression analyses and fixed effects were employed. The findings show that ESG reporting has a positive and significant impact on the association between corporate GIP and green R&D expenditure, implying its compensating and supportive function in the form of green signals in green outputs. This research could help executives and lawmakers, especially in developing countries to build innovative environmental strategies for business sustainability.

Environmental law, environmental policy stringency, and development of environmental technologies in China

China's fast industrialization and economic expansion has led to environmental degradation, prompting the government to implement a slew of environmental regulations and laws. This article examines how China's stringent environmental policies and legislation have impacted the development of environmental technology. The study's panel of Chinese companies confirmed that more stringent regulations really spurred innovation in green technology. This research lends credence to the premise that stricter environmental regulations are helpful in inspiring the development of cleaner technology that may help mitigate environmental issues. Research also shows that tighter environmental legislation increases environmental policy's effect on technological development. According to these results, environmental law may improve the efficiency of environmental policy by providing a hospitable framework for the application of technological innovation. The findings of this research have significant implications for Chinese policymakers committed to fostering sustainable development. The need of rigorous environmental rules to support comprehensive environmental policies that promote the development of greener technology is emphasized. The results shed even more light on how crucial it is to enforce environmental laws in order to ensure that environmental policies are effectively implemented. In essence, this study contributes to the expanding body of knowledge on the link between environmental policy and technical advancement by illuminating the potential for China's environmental policy and law to work together to encourage sustainable development. China's investment in green tech research and development may mitigate the environmental damage caused by its rapid economic growth.

Implementation effect of China's green finance pilot policy based on synthetic control method: a green innovation perspective

In order to develop green finance and realize the coordinated development of the environment and economy, China established green finance reform and innovation pilot zones in 2017. Green innovation has problems such as low financing utilization rate and lack of market competitiveness. The green finance pilot policies (GFPP) based on government management provide solutions to these problems. It is of great significance to measure and provide feedback on the implementation effect of GFPP in China for policy-making and green development. This article focuses on the influence of the construction of GFPP by using the five pilot zones as the study area and constructs the green innovation level indicator. Based on the synthetic control method, it chooses provinces that do not carry out the pilot policy as a control group. After that, assign weights to the control region to fit a synthetic control group with resembling characteristics to simulate the five pilot provinces without implementing the policy. Then, compare it with its current policy effect and highlight the policy implementation effect on green innovation. The placebo test and robustness test were conducted to prove the reliability of the conclusions. The results show that since the implementation of GFPP, the level of green innovation in the five pilot cities has shown an overall rising trend. Furthermore, we found that the balance of credit and investment in science and technology has a negative moderating effect on the implementation of GFPP, while the per capita GDP has a significant positive moderating effect.

Green finance, environmental pollution and high-quality economic development-a study based on China's provincial panel data

Under the new normal, green finance is inevitably linked to high-quality economic development in China. Based on 30 province panel data sets from China from 2010 to 2019, this research employs an innovative spatial econometric model to integrate green finance, environmental pollution and high-quality economic development into a unified empirical analysis framework. Regional green finance and high-quality economic development have spatial spillover effects in China, according to spatial auto-regressive and spatial error model tests, with the eastern region leading, the central region running in parallel and the western region chasing, because of a strong moderating effect in the eastern region. Green finance contributes greatly to high-quality economic development, but increased environmental pollution impedes high-quality economic development. Green financing can help to mitigate the detrimental effects of pollution on high-quality economic development. According to the mechanism of action analysis, green finance reduces pollution by modifying the industrial structure and boosting scientific and technological growth. Finally, the green finance threshold test demonstrates a nonlinear impact on economic quality development after passing a specified threshold value and has a strong threshold characteristic. This research has policy implications since it improves understanding of the dynamics of high-quality economic development as well as the benefits, mechanisms and heterogeneity of green finance in reducing pollution and empowering high-quality economic development.

Pathway for the low-carbon consumption pattern transition of residents in six eastern coastal provinces of China: using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis with panel data

China has embarked on society-wide emission reduction initiatives to tackle the growing decarbonization pressures on national economic and social development. The low-carbon consumption pattern transition of the residential sector is viewed as a crucial impetus that will drive society toward sustainable development. However, how such a consumption transition can be facilitated remains unclear. By adopting 2015-2019 provincial panel data, this study assesses the carbon emissions associated with the consumption patterns of residents in Eastern China and further explores the causal relationships between policy and socioeconomic factors as well as the formation of a low-carbon consumption base using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method (fsQCA). This study explores five equivalent recipes that achieve the expected low-carbon consumption base and then classifies them into market-driven (M1) and tertiary-driven (M2) recipes. Longitudinal analysis based on the between consistency (BECONS) and the within consistency (WICONS) values reveals that the tertiary-driven pathways remain highly stable across time, whereas those pathways that heavily rely on market interventions may be more applicable in certain cases. Accelerating the low-carbon consumption transition via the explored pathways is expected to exert pressure on the production transition, and this study provides suggestions for regions with varied development levels to balance the trade-off between China's social development and its decarbonization targets.

Competitor-Weighted Centrality and Small-World Clusters in Competition Networks on Firms' Innovation Ambidexterity: Evidence from the Wind Energy Industry

A firm's embedding structures in a technology competition network can influence its propensity for innovation ambidexterity. Using PCT (patent cooperation treaty) patent data of wind energy companies between 2010 and 2019, we adopted social network analysis and fixed-effects panel negative binomial regression to examine the impacts of network structural features on firm innovation ambidexterity. The results show that competitor-weighted centrality contributes to a firm's propensities for both incremental and radical green innovation. In contrast, a firm's embeddedness in small-world clusters can moderate the effect of the firm's competitor-weighted centrality positively on its incremental innovation but negatively on its radical innovation. The study makes three theoretical contributions. First, it enriches the understanding of how the competition network affects innovation ambidexterity. Second, it provides new insights into the relationship between competition network structures and technology innovation strategy. Finally, it contributes to bridging the research on the social embeddedness perspective and green innovation literature. The findings of this study have important implications for enterprises in the wind energy sector regarding how competitive relationships affect green technology innovation. The study underscores the importance of considering the competitiveness of a firm's rivals and the embedded structural features when devising green innovation strategies.

The diminishing marginal contribution of R&D investment on green technological progress: a case study of China's manufacturing industry

One of the ways to fight against global warming is by means of green technological progress. This paper explores the nonlinear relationship between R&D investment and green technological progress based on panel threshold regression model using panel data of 26 manufacturing sub-sectors in China from 2004 to 2017. The results show that the double-threshold model can better explain the nonlinear relationship between the two, and the R&D investment in the three ranges of low, medium, and high levels can significantly promote green technological progress in China's manufacturing industry. However, with the improvement of R&D investment level, the promotion effect of R&D investment on the progress of manufacturing green technology is decreasing, which explains the low R&D intensity of China's manufacturing industry to a certain extent. When the level of R&D investment reaches a certain level, its promoting effect on manufacturing industry's green technological progress will be greatly reduced, and the motivation of enterprises to invest in R&D based on self-interest will decrease, so that the scale of R&D investment will be lower than the optimal scale of society. R&D investment can also improve green technical efficiency change. In addition, environmental regulation can promote green technological progress in manufacturing industry. However, due to the implementation of output-oriented environmental regulation policies, China's environmental regulation can inhibit the improvement of green technical efficiency change. Based on the conclusion, this paper argues that China should implement differentiated R&D subsidy policies for manufacturing enterprises, especially to increase R&D subsidies for enterprises with a medium level of R&D investment, and formulate appropriate environmental regulatory policies, to promote green and low-carbon transformation of China's manufacturing sector.

Study on the impact of informal environmental regulation on substantive green innovation in China: evidence from PITI disclosure

Informal environmental regulation plays an important role in green innovation, which is of great significance to realize the win-win situation between environmental protection and economic development. However, few studies have focused on the incentive effect of informal environmental regulation on innovation motivation. Based on the panel data of 286 cities from 2003 to 2018, the DID (difference-in-differences) model is used to investigate the impact of pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) published by ENGOs (Environmental Non-governmental Organizations) on substantive green innovation. The results show that PITI disclosure has a significant positive and robust effect on substantive green innovation in China. Additionally, heterogeneous analysis shows that key environmental protection and highly innovative cities benefit more from PITI disclosure. The effect in the second stage is stronger than in the first stage. Mechanism analysis shows that PITI disclosure enhances substantive green innovation through FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) and human capital channels. Based on the above conclusions, three policy implications are put forward in this paper.

Causes and Evolution Characteristics of Green Innovation Efficiency Loss: The Perspective of Factor Mismatch under Local Government Competition

The objective of this paper is to measure the efficiency loss of green innovation caused by local government competition and explore its causes and evolution characteristics. Based on the equimarginal principles such as the deviation of the allocation of green innovation output factors, this paper uses the panel data of China’s provinces (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) from 2000 to 2020 and employs the spatial panel measurement model and the Kernel density estimation. The study finds that first, local government competition causes the mismatch of local innovation factors not only locally but also in neighboring regions. Second, the mismatch of innovative talents and capital caused by local government competition lowers the green innovation efficiency. Third, the shortage of innovative talents caused by local government competition is the main reason for the loss of green innovation efficiency in Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. Fourth, the degree of efficiency loss of green innovation at the provincial level in China is heterogeneous in government competition strategies, and the loss due to tax competition is the most significant. Fifth, although the loss of green innovation efficiency generally decreases yearly, in the future, the institutional competition will still hinder the improvement of green innovation efficiency in the eastern, central and western regions of China. Our policy suggestions include promoting regional cooperation and cultivating innovative talents to further improve the efficiency of green innovation.

Exploring an Efficient Evolutionary Game Model for the Government-Enterprise-Public during the Double Carbon Policy in China

The realization of China’s “double carbon” goal is of great significance to the world environment and China’s economy and society. Through the establishment of the “government–enterprise–public” evolutionary game model, this paper explores the interaction between government policy guidance, low-carbon technology R&D behavior of enterprises, and public purchase of carbon label products, as well as the micro-driving path, aiming to provide suggestions for the implementation of the “double carbon” policy and carbon label system in China. The results show that the choice of government, enterprises, and public strategies is closely related to their own costs and benefits. Public sentiment can effectively urge the government to actively fulfill its responsibilities. Effective government policy guidance plays a key role in low-carbon technology R&D behavior of enterprises. There is an interaction between low-carbon technology R&D behavior of enterprises and public purchase of carbon label products.