ABSTRACT

The problems affecting the sustainable development of economy, ecology and society, such as the lack of resources and environmental damage caused by the rapid development of industrial economy, have aroused people's thinking on pollution control and environmental protection. Michael Porter proposed that "the formulation of appropriate environmental regulations will promote enterprises to carry out more technological innovation activities, so as to enable enterprises to have a competitive advantage in market activities", which is often referred to as "Porter Hypothesis". The neoclassical school of economics believed that the implementation of environmental regulation policy will increase private costs, which is not conducive to the improvement of productivity and competitiveness of enterprises, so it hinders technological innovation; Some studies have also shown that the simple linear relationship cannot accurately represent the relationship between environmental regulation and technological innovation, and there is a nonlinear relationship between them.

Under this background, in order to achieve the objectives of environmental protection and pollution control, and promote the construction of ecological civilization, based on the existing research, this paper further studies how environmental regulation affects technological innovation. Using the provincial panel data of China from 2011 to 2019, this paper calculates the intensity of environmental regulation and the level of technological innovation in each province by constructing the comprehensive evaluation index system of environmental regulation and the comprehensive evaluation index system of technological innovation, uses the fixed effect model to analyze the specific impact of environmental regulation on technological innovation, and analyzes the reasons for the difference of impact. The research results show that: (1) The level of technological innovation in the process of gradually increasing the intensity of environmental regulation is characterized by a "U" shape, which decreases first and then increases. At present, the average intensity of environmental regulation in China is on the left side of the "U"-shaped curve, which inhibits the improvement of the level of technological innovation. Some provinces have crossed the "U"-shaped turning point to realize the incentive effect on technological innovation; (2) The level of economic development and government support are conducive to improving the level of technological innovation; (3) The impact of environmental regulation on technological innovation depends not only on the intensity of regulation, but also on factors such as location, industry or environmental regulation tools. Based on this, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions for the formulation and adjustment of environmental regulation policies.

Read the article here:  环境规制对技术创新的影响效应研究_申珂.pdf