Green Certification And Green Innovation

As a prevalent standard in global market,ISO 14001 certification is the core of ISO 14000 environmental management system standards.Acquiring ISO 14001 certification will bring several benefits to corporate.For example,setting up an environmental-friendly image,obtaining the "green pass" into the international market,improving the efficiency of pollution control and saving costs.Therefore,since its promulgation,more and more firms carry out green certification,especially heavy pollution enterprises engaging in petroleum,chemical industry,mining,chemical manufacturing and other polluted industries.At the same time,under the supervision of all sectors of society,these enterprises try to reduce the negative externalities through various approaches.Among them,green innovation is an effective measure to deal with external pressure.Green certification and green innovation are two different environmental protection strategies of enterprises.However,there are few studies on the interaction between them in the literature.There is no consensus on whether they are substitution relationship or complementary relationship.On the one hand,green certification can improve the environmental management of enterprises,help enterprises to carry out environmental protection innovation and improve the efficiency of pollution treatment.On the other hand,green certification can paste "green label" for enterprises to cover up their terrible environmental pollution behavior.Therefore,based on the environmental protection behavior of heavily pollution enterprises,this thesis studies the impact of the green certification behavior of enterprises on the green innovation behavior,to explore whether the green certification of enterprises is a "green weapon" to promote green innovation or a "symbolic tool" to disguise environmental protection behavior.The heavy pollution listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share market from 2003 to 2018 were used as the sample.And the enterprises with ISO 14001 green certification were matched with the enterprises without ISO 14001 green certification by propensity score matching(PSM).Then,taking the matched experimental group and the control group as samples,to explore the dynamic changes of green innovation behavior before and after the green certification of enterprises by using the double difference method(DID).At the same time,the green innovation behavior of enterprises were divided into "self-interest" green innovation and "social" green innovation,and respectively analyzing the different effect of green certification on the two kinds of green innovation.In the further analysis,to discuss the effects of the green certification on the green innovation between companies with different characters.I test the different environmental behavior of enterprises with different share nature of equity,different source of income and different degree of financing constraints.Through empirical analysis,this thesis draws the following conclusions:(1)The degree of green innovation is significantly improved after getting ISO 14001 certification.(2)The degree of "social type" green innovation is significantly improved,while the degree of "selfinterest" green innovation is not significantly changed.(3)The positive effect of green certification on green innovation and "social" green innovation is more significant in stateowned enterprises,non-export-oriented enterprises and enterprises with low financial constraints.This thesis has two important innovations and contributions.Firstly,this thesis studies the relationship between green certification and green innovation,and the relationship differences between green certification and two types of green innovation,which complements the relevant research.Secondly,in this paper,the classification method of green innovation expands the research dimension of green innovation.