Research On The Impact Of Environmental Taxes On Green Process Innovation In Manufacturing Industry

Since the reform and opening up,China has achieved rapid economic growth for an extended period with high investment and energy consumption.However,industrial emissions caused serious environmental problems.Hence,China has issued a series of environmental policies to minimize the negative externalities of environmental pollution.The Environmental Protection Tax Law replaced the sewage charge system,and this law aims to attract polluters’ attention to environmental protection issues based on the principle of “polluter pays.” And then guiding them to transform the traditional heavy pollution and high energy consumption production process and reduce the negative external impact caused by environmental pollution through the “green transformation” of production processes and equipments.Scholars mainly focused on the double dividend effect of environmental taxes(ETes)in the past.Recent research suggests that scholars began to focus on its impact on corporate innovation behavior.Compared with traditional innovation activities,green process innovation(GPI)pays more attention to the environmental effects brought by innovation activities and focuses more on reducing the negative externalities of environmental pollution from the production side.In severe environmental situations,accelerating GPI has become a sharp weapon for the manufacturing industry to achieve high-quality green growth.Therefore,it is necessary to link the two and further clarify the mechanism of ETes on GPI,which is vital for the government to improve the current ETes policy system and better play the incentive effect of ETes on GPI.Based on Porter hypothesis and other theories,this thesis elaborated the mechanism of ETes on GPI.This thesis takes Chinses 27 manufacturing industries in China from2010 to 2020 as the research sample.It examines how ETes affect GPI and the moderating effects of industry heterogeneity and green finance by constructing a time-individual twoway fixed effect regression model.It is increased to the latest data in 2020 in the part of the robustness test.The results show that:(1)The function curve of ETes on GPI in the manufacturing industry is inverted “U” and the current intensity of ETes collection in China has not reached the optimal level;(2)ETes have heterogeneous effects on GPI of manufacturing industry: under the given intensity of ETes,light pollution manufacturing industry is more sensitive to ETes than heavy pollution manufacturing industry,and light pollution manufacturing industry is more willing to implement GPI in the face of ETes collection;(3)The inverted U-shaped relationship between ETes and GPI is positively moderated by green finance,which can effectively alleviate the negative impact of excessive ETes pressure on GPI in the manufacturing industry and push it to a higher level.