Influence Of Government Environmental Protection Subsidy On Green Innovation Of Heavily Polluting Enterprises

At present,green development has become an important part of the community.The report of the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to implement the "five in one" development strategy and vigorously promote the construction of ecological civilization;Subsequently,in the report of the19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,it was clearly emphasized that China’s economic development has entered a high-quality development stage,and the development concept of "innovation,coordination,green,openness and sharing" was put forward.Among them,the "green" development concept is in line with the construction needs of a beautiful China.How to balance economic growth and green development has been an urgent subject to be discussed.In the 1990 s,Porter put forward the “win-win concept” between environmental regulation and economic benefits: on the one hand,there is a "first mover advantage" in environmental governance.Enterprises gain more reputation advantages than their competitors in the market by taking the lead in taking environmental protection measures,such as improving the environmental performance of processes and products.On the other hand,environmental regulation has the effect of "innovation compensation".Under the pressure of environmental system,enterprises have to meet the supervision through product or process innovation.Although the cost of environmental compliance increases,technological innovation improves the production efficiency of enterprises,which can partially or completely offset the negative impact.Government environmental protection subsidy is one of the main tools of environmental regulation policies implemented in China.The purpose of the government’s environmental protection subsidy policy is to encourage enterprises to incorporate environmental protection,energy conservation and emission reduction into future development strategies,internalize the external problems caused by environmental pollution by improving product process or performance,and take into account the improvement of environmental benefits while realizing economic benefits.Although the green innovation level of China’s heavily polluting enterprises has developed rapidly with the strong support of the government,it is still worth exploring how to follow the basic principle of “market leading and government guiding”,and how to give play to the “visible hand” of government policy and its implementation effect on the basis of giving full play to the role of the “invisible hand”of market competition.The main contents of this paper are as follows: firstly,sort out and summarize the literature at home and abroad,and summarize the previous research conclusions.Secondly,according to the theoretical basis involved in this paper,this paper analyzes the impact of government environmental protection subsidies on enterprise green innovation,analyzes the regulatory effect of market competition between government environmental protection subsidies and enterprise green innovation,and puts forward the following three research hypotheses: H1 government environmental protection subsidies significantly promote the green innovation output of heavily polluting enterprises;H2 market competition can play a role in stimulating the green innovation output of heavily polluting enterprises;H3 market competition plays a positive regulatory role between government environmental protection subsidies and enterprise green innovation.Thirdly,from the perspective of innovation motivation,this paper divides the different types of green innovation,and divides the output of enterprise green innovation into substantive and strategic types.The difference between the two kinds of green innovation is that the former pays more attention to green R&D with high technological level,which plays a fundamental role in promoting the progress of green technology of enterprises and represents green innovation with high technological level;Strategic green innovation projects tend to have shorter cycle and less risk,representing green innovation with low technical level.Due to the high risk and uncertainty of green innovation research and development,and the current policy does not make specific requirements for the type and quality of green patents,enterprises are likely to regard green innovation as a strategic activity to meet the purpose of government supervision.In the long run,they can not substantially promote green transformation and upgrading,and it is difficult to transform it into high-quality green development.In view of this,this paper further explores the impact of government environmental protection subsidies and market competition on the output of heterogeneous green innovation,as well as the difference of market competition regulating effect.Through the empirical test of the data of heavy polluting enterprises from 2011 to 2019,it is found that: first,the government environmental protection subsidy significantly improves the green patent output of heavy polluting enterprises.Compared with substantive green innovation,the government environmental protection subsidy plays a more obvious role in promoting the output of strategic innovation.Second,with the improvement of market competition,the positive impact of government environmental protection subsidies on the green innovation output of heavily polluting enterprises is more obvious,but the combined effect of government environmental protection subsidies and market competition only has a significant impact on strategic green innovation and has no obvious incentive effect on substantive green innovation.Third,the above empirical results are still valid after controlling endogenous problems and robustness test.This paper finds that although the government environmental protection subsidy has an obvious incentive effect on the green innovation output of heavy polluting enterprises,and this incentive effect is more obvious with the improvement of market competition.The above effect is more reflected in the green innovation strategy than substantive green innovation,which shows that under the joint action of government guidance and market mechanism,heavy polluting enterprises are trying to pursue the number of green innovation Opportunistic behavior of ignoring the quality of green innovation.This requires that the government should analyze the difficulty and potential benefits of enterprises in carrying out innovation activities in combination with the actual situation of enterprises when formulating and issuing environmental protection subsidy policies,and increase the early assistance for innovation activities with high scientific and technological content.For projects with low technical content,reasonable guidance and appropriate assistance should be provided.In the later stage of subsidy review,the innovative achievements obtained are compared and analyzed,and the subsidy payment standard is refined,so as to effectively improve the quality of new achievements.At the same time,when implementing the environmental protection subsidy policy,the government should also maintain the market mechanism and screen out capable enterprises to give subsidies through the role of "survival of the fittest" of the market.For enterprise managers,they should improve the utilization efficiency of government environmental protection subsidy resources,abandon short-sighted behavior,and fundamentally promote the upgrading of green technology with substantive innovation.