| With the deterioration of resources and environment,governments all over the world have paid special attention to the ecological environment.It is not difficult to see that the Chinese government has emphasized the balance between economic development and environmental protection with the notion of "beautiful China" and the idea of "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets "which were put forward at the 18th National Congress of the People's Republic of China and the Nineteenth National Congress.As an important external condition for the survival and development of human beings,resources and environment have certain attributes of public goods.Enterprises as rational economic participants are likely to cause pollution and damage to the environment in the pursuit of profit.The market mechanism--"The invisible hand" fails to play an effective role in solving conflicts between environmental protection and economic growth due to the externality of the environment;therefore,Environmental regulation that belongs to the government intervention in the environmental field is particularly necessary.At present,technological innovation as a key driving force to the economic development plays an important role in the macro-level countries and regions as well as micro-level enterprises.As a starting point of innovation activities,R&D investments have a close connection with output of innovative achievements and core competition of enterprises.Then how does environmental regulation affect the R&D activities of companies?The research on environmental regulation and technological innovation started in the 1970s,and three representative conclusions-the Polluting Heaven Hypothesis,the Factor Endowment Hypothesis and the Porter's Hypothesis have been formed so far.The first one believes that the environmental regulation will have a negative impact on R&D activities due to the increasing cost.The second one believes that the impact of environmental regulation on R&D and innovation has "double-sided".The third one believes that environmental regulation is conducive to R&D innovation of enterprises.From the perspective of the related research,the relationship between the environmental regulation and the innovation has developed according to the route as“traditional hypothesis—Porter hypothesis—uncertain hypothesis".Today,the conclusions on this issue still have not shown a consistent trend;therefore,the mechanism of environmental regulation and R&D investment remains to be further explored.In recent years,academics and practitioners have become increasingly concerned about corporate social responsibility.Under the background of the global advocacy,some companies have generated "pseudo-social responsibility" for the purpose of meeting external demands and speculatively sharing social responsibility benefits.As an important manifestation of pseudo-social responsibility in the environmental field,greenwashing has brought severe difficulties to public identification,external supervision,and government punishment due to its serious information asymmetry.Therefore,greenwashing is rapidly spread at the enterprise level.When companies face pressure from governments and industrial competitors,they will adjust their strategic behaviors to adapt to external changes.Will environmental regulation lead to the corporate greenwashing?Will the implementation of greenwashing affect corporate R&D activities?For the above confusions,this paper tries to explore the relationship between environmental regulation and R&D investment from the"hypocrisy" perspective about greenwashing again with the background of Chinese advocacy of green economy and technological innovation and the spreading of the greenwashing behavior.The main research consists of four levels:Firstly,this paper defines the concepts of environmental regulation,greenwashing,and R&D investment based on existing studies,and reviews the existing literature including the economic consequences of environmental regulation,the driving factors and economic consequences of greenwashing,and the influencing factors of R&D investment,aiming to provide groundwork for the possible logical relationships among them.Secondly,neoclassical economics and regulatory economics,including the theories of public choice,commissioned agency,signaling,transaction costs,externalities,cost-benefit,stakeholders,new institutional organization,reputation,corporate citizenship,economic ethics,fraud triangle,technological innovation,behavioral decision-making,modern investment,and resource-based view will provide the theoretical foundation to support logical derivation.At the same time,this paper analyzes Chinese current institutional background to provide a basis for the specific contextual analysis of the role of each logical relationship.Thirdly,this paper analyzes the background and mechanism of the following four research problems--environmental regulation and R&D investment,greenwashing behavior and R&D investment,environmental regulation,and the mediating role of greeningwashing behavior,then proposes a series of hypothetical propositions that can be verified.Finally,based on listed companies in China's A-stock heavy polluting industry from 2010 to 2015,this paper test the relationship of environmental regulation,greening behavior,and corporate R&D empirically,and dig down relevant context factors and the effect path in each part of the inspection process.In this paper,basecd on the division of environmental cregulation ancd the definition and measurement of drifting green behavior,through theoretical analysis and research hypotheses,the main conclusions are as follows.(1)Management-controlled environmental regulation has played a significant role in promoting R&D investment in enterprises through the "reversing mechanism",and this effect has become more prominent in private enterprises.Guided incentive-based environmental regulation has adopted the "push-in mechanism" to enterprises.R&D activities have had an inhibitory effect,and this conclusion is even more pronounced in state-owned enterprises.Further inspecting heterogeneous R&D investment,we found that management-controlled environmental regulation mainly promoted more basic exploration-based R&D activities,and guided incentive-based environmental regulation promoted R&D investment while investing in exploratory investment.Inhibition.(2)Greening behavior has a significant negative impact on corporate R&D activities through reducing internal employee loyalty,and this conclusion is even more pronounced in the companies that locate in higher degree of marketization and have lower agency costs.It shows that the degree of external marketization and the internal agency factors are the specific contextual factors that play out the related economic consequences.(3)Management-controlled environmental regulation can significantly inhibit companies' greenwashing behaviors through cost effects,and this conclusion is even more pronounced in private enterprises.Guiding incentive-based environmental regulation stimulates greenwashing behaviors through the catered mechanism,and the conclusion is more prominent in state-owned enterprises.It shows that different property rights of enterprises are the specific contextual factors that make the two works.(4)Greenwashing plays an intermediary role in environmental regulation and R&D investment.Specifically,management-controlled environmental regulation will promote R&D investment in companies by inhibiting greenwashing behaviors;guiding incentive-type environmental regulation will lead to greenwashing of companies and thus inhibit R&D investment.From the perspective of situational analysis,the intermediate role of bleaching green in management-controlled environmental regulation and R&D investment mainly influences private enterprises,companies with higher degree of marketization and lower agency costs,and the final result focuses on exploration innovation.The promotion of R&D investment;while intermediary role of greenwashing in guided incentive-based environmental regulation and R&D investment only plays a role in the state-owned enterprises,but the degree of marketization and agency factors have no impact.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,based on the theory of externalities,this paper proposes to divide environmental regulation into a management-controlled type and a guided-incentive type from the perspective of positive and negative externalities.This approach expands environmental regulation classification methods.Compared with the existing research on the classification of environmental regulation,this paper believes that environmental regulationpitself is a targeted intervention on environmental externalities.Therefore,it is divided into two aspects:the guidance of positive externalities and the control of negative externalities.It is more conducive to the detailed analysis of macroscopic policies on the conduction path and mechanism of micro-enterprises' behavior,and also provides appropriate groundwork for the detailed study of the economic consequences of environmental regulation.Secondly,this paper analyzes the R&D investment as a corporate behavioral decision.Investigating investment in exploration and development respectively,and enriches the theoretical analysis framework of environmental regulation and R&D investment from the perspective of heterogeneity.Thirdly,the existing research focuses on the economic consequences of greenwashing mainly focusing on financial performance,branding and capital market stock returns;moreover,through launching the study of greenwashing behaviors and investment issues,this paper expands their economic consequences.Last but not least,starting with the hypocrisy mechanism,this paper enriches the function route of environmental regulation applying on R&D investment of the companies,which becomes the main contribution of this paper.This paper is intended to provide a sound basis for the government departments to design environmental governance,and to improve the management of greening behavior,and to provide some reference for the develop ment of the company's green operations through the policy recommendations at the government level and the corporate level. |
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