| After decades of rapid development after reform and opening up,China’s economy needs to transform from traditional high-speed growth to high-quality development,and the coordinated development of economic construction and environmental protection is one of the important tasks of high-quality development.From "building a beautiful China" to fully implementing the "new development concept" and then to the report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizing the promotion of green development,this undoubtedly does not show China’s determination to promote high-quality economic development and environmental protection.Eco-efficiency can organically connect environmental performance and financial performance,and improving eco-efficiency is of great significance to the high-quality development of the country and the green transformation of enterprises.Heavy polluting enterprises,as large polluters,should take the initiative to adapt to the sustainable development strategy,incorporate environmental performance into financial performance,and continuously improve eco-efficiency.In addition,relevant departments in China have continuously improved environmental laws and regulations,and puts forward higher requirements for the environmental responsibility of heavy polluting enterprises.Under strict environmental regulations,the investment in environmental protection of heavily polluting enterprises is bound to have an impact on eco-efficiency.Based on this,the article starts from the microscopic perspective and takes the environmental protection investment and eco-efficiency of heavily polluting enterprises as the starting point,and deeply studies the impact mechanism of environmental protection investment on eco-efficiency.First of all,the article defines the relevant concepts on the basis of previous studies,and reviews the relevant literature on the factors affecting eco-efficiency and the economic and environmental consequences of environmental protection investment.Secondly,according to the relevant research conclusions of predecessors,the paper puts forward research hypotheses based on the analysis of externality theory,Porter hypothesis,stakeholder theory and signaling theory.Finally,based on the reference of previous indicator selection and measurement methods for measuring and evaluating the eco-efficiency of heavily polluting enterprises,the article uses data from 66 A-share heavily polluting listed enterprises from 2016 to 2021,and through a series of statistical,analytical,and empirical tests,obtains the following conclusions about heavily polluting listed enterprises.First,the eco-efficiency of heavily polluting companies is slowly increasing,and pure technical efficiency is the main driving force.Second,the increase in the investment in environmental protection in the current period and the investment in environmental protection in the previous period can significantly improve the ecoefficiency.Third,environmental protection investment can significantly improve green technology innovation,but green technology innovation does not play a mediating role in the impact of environmental protection investment on eco-efficiency.Fourth,investment in environmental protection can improve eco-efficiency by reducing financing constraints,and financing constraints play a partial intermediary role.Fifth,compared with enterprises without environmental protection concepts or environmental management systems,the increase in environmental protection investment of enterprises with environmental protection concepts or environmental management systems has a more obvious effect on improving eco-efficiency.Compared to state-owned enterprises,the increase in environmental protection investment of non-state-owned enterprises has a more significant effect on improving eco-efficiency.On the basis of the existing research,this article deeply studies the mechanism of the impact of environmental protection investment on the eco-efficiency of heavily polluting enterprises.This not only has certain theoretical significance for enriching the intrinsic motivation of environmental protection investment and the influencing factors of eco-efficiency,but also has practical significance for promoting the green transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. |
