Research On The Effect Of Environmental Regulation On Regional Greet Innovation Efficiency

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has achieved world-renowned achievements,but it has also paid huge resource and environmental costs.The contradiction between environmental problems and economic development is becoming more and more serious.To this end,the government has issued a series of policies to control the discharge of pollutants.However,the implementation of environmental regulation policies,while solving the environmental pollution problem,has also squeezed the company’s R&D funds to a certain extent,which has an adverse effect on innovation performance.But in the long run,innovation is an important measure to achieve a "win-win" between environmental protection and economic development.So,how does environmental regulation as an important means for the government to control environmental pollution affect the performance of green innovation?In view of this,on the basis of elaborating the mechanism of environmental regulation on green innovation efficiency,first,the green innovation efficiency of 30 provincial administrative regions was measured using Super-SBM combined with window analysis,and a threshold effect model was constructed to further test environmental regulation’s non-linear impact on green innovation efficiency.Secondly,examine the internal mechanism of environmental regulation on green innovation efficiency through foreign direct investment,foreign direct investment and industrial structure.Third,it examines the heterogeneous impact of environmental regulations on technological innovation under different levels of government R&D funding,R&D intensity,human capital,and fiscal decentralization.Finally,on the basis of the above research,combined with China’s basic national conditions,further propose policy recommendations to protect the environment and optimize innovation performance.The main conclusions are as follows:Firstly,the direct impact of environmental regulations on the efficiency of green innovation is non-linear,and there is a significant single threshold.To the left of the threshold,strengthening environmental regulations will result in a loss of innovation efficiency;to the right of the threshold,the enhancement of environmental regulations will instead help improve innovation performanceSecondly,environmental regulation promotes the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure to indirectly improve the efficiency of green innovation,but the impact of green direct investment and foreign direct investment on the efficiency of green innovation is negative.The implementation of environmental regulatory policies has caused the host country to lose its attractiveness to foreign companies and weakened the technology spillover effect Environmental regulations affect the total amount of foreign direct investment and location choices and indirectly affect the level of technological innovation in the home country.Environmental regulation guides the development of the industrial structure to a clean direction through the mandatory "cleaning" or "survival of the fittest" of existing enterprises,which indirectly affects technological innovation.Thirdly,government R&D funding and human capital are positively regulating the effects of environmental regulation on green innovation efficiency,while R&D density and fiscal decentralization are negatively regulating.The government’s research and development funding has solved the problem of capital distress and information asymmetry of regulated enterprises,and increased their enthusiasm for innovation.In the face of environmental regulations,the innovation performance of companies with talent advantages is higher,because human capital directly determines not only the independent innovation ability of the enterprise,but also the ability of the company to introduce digestion and absorption for secondary innovation.Companies with high R&D intensity will have a stronger incentive to misappropriate innovative funds to absorb the increase in additional costs,in order to reduce the adverse impact of environmental regulations on business operations.Principal-agent problems caused by fiscal decentralization and inconsistent central and local goals will lead to incomplete implementation of environmental regulatory policies,thereby weakening the incentive role of environmental regulations for innovation.Fourthly,the average effect of the "adjustment of sewage charges standard" policy on China’s green innovation efficiency was negative,and it passed the significance test at the level of 1%.From the perspective of dynamic impact,the "pilot" policy has a significant impact on local green innovation efficiency.Negative effects gradually weakened.It shows that the intensity of China’s environmental regulations has not exceeded the threshold,and"following the cost effect" is dominant.The main reason is that China’s current level of environmental regulation is low.Even if the sewage charge standard is raised,it still does not reach the level of environmental regulation intensity corresponding to the inflection point.Enterprises do not have enough motivation to improve production technology or innovation in pollution control technology.Increased sewage charges have squeezed more R&D funds and weakened innovation capacity.Over time,companies began to adjust production processes and scale to adapt to environmental regulations,so the negative impact of this policy has become smaller and smaller.