Could environmental courts promote substantive corporate green innovation? Evidence from cities of China

Can the new energy demonstration city policy promote corporate green innovation capability?

This study examines the impact of environmental judicial reinforcement on green technology innovation, constructing a progressive difference-in-differences model using firm- and city-level panel data from 2006 to 2019 and taking the successive establishment of environmental courts by the Intermediate People’s Court in Chinese prefectural-level cities as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that establishing environmental courts in China promotes green technology innovation. This finding still holds after a series of robustness tests such as selected fixed-effects Poisson model regression. The mechanism analysis suggests that environmental courts primarily promote increased green innovation output by heavily polluting firms by exerting more substantial pressure regarding environmental legitimacy. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive impact of the establishment of environmental courts on green technology innovation is more pronounced in water pollution-intensive industries and areas with high public participation and media attention. Our findings provide new insights into how environmental justice affects firms’ green innovation and validate the Porter hypothesis. Also, they serves as a reference for constructing environmental courts in China and other policy jurisdictions that may be interested.

Based on the panel data of 283 cities in China from 2009 to 2018, this paper analyzes the effect of urban green scientific and technological innovation enhancement on hazardous air pollutants using the GS2SLS method, which simultaneously controls for model endogeneity and spatial spillover effects and reveals the transmission mechanism of urban green scientific and technological innovation level. It was found that (1) There is a significant spatial spillover effect of hazardous air pollutants between regions, both in China as a whole and in the eastern, central, and western parts of the country, and the spatial spillover effect of hazardous air pollutants is significantly greater in the eastern and central parts of China than in the western parts. (2) Green technological innovation has a significant inhibitory effect on hazardous air pollutants in cities in eastern and central China. An extended study found that the improvement in green technology levels in innovative cities has a better effect on controlling hazardous air pollutants than in non-innovative cities. (3) The energy- saving and green economy effects have a mediating influence on the effect of green technological innovation on hazardous air pollutants in cities, and the simultaneous occurrence of these two effects in green technological innovation serves to enhance the transmission of hazardous air pollutants in order to facilitate the long-term management of haze.

Policy, innovation, market or behavior driven effects: Energy green transition and environmental management in Chinese heterogeneous cities

China has made great efforts to establish an ecological compensation mechanism, but there lacks empirical evidence on whether this scheme effectively reduces air pollution. To test the effectiveness of air quality ecological compensation (AQEC) on air pollution control, this study considers 114 resource-based cities in China and uses a multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model for empirical analysis. The finding shows that the AQEC policy significantly reduces the concentration of air pollutants by promoting air pollution prevention and local authority enthusiasm for pollution abatement, resulting in an average annual decrease in PM2.5 concentrations of approximately 3.9 µg/m3 in the pilot cities. The AQEC policy of resource-based cities in eastern and northern China, and those with less financial pressure have greater inhibitory effects on air pollution. The study recommends establishing long-term protection mechanisms and implementing differentiated policies focused on green technological innovation and financial autonomy.

In the pursuit of China’s environmental targets to achieve a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, the carbon emission trading scheme (CETs) has emerged as a critical policy instrument. Since the 14th Five-Year Plan, China has been on a two-wheel drive to prevent pollution and combat climate change and proposes to fight the Blue Sky Defense. Therefore, this study focuses on prefecture-level cities in China and employs a spatial difference-difference (SDID) model to investigate the spatial spillover effects of CETs on urban total factor carbon emission efficiency (TFCEE). Furthermore, a mediating effect model is constructed to explore the channels through which CETs influence carbon emission efficiency. The results show that (1) implementing urban CETs can significantly improve urban itself and the surrounding carbon emission efficiency. (2) The CETs can indirectly promote the improvement of carbon efficiency by optimizing the allocation of labor resources and strengthening the level of green technology innovation. (3) Compared with the cities in central and western China, implementing the CETs has a stronger promotion effect on the carbon emission efficiency of the cities in eastern China.

This paper conducts a textual analysis of the reports on the work of local governments to measure local governments’ attention to environmental governance and study the impact of these concerns on corporate green innovation. We find evidence that local governments’ attention to the environment will significantly improve corporate green innovation, and the government can promote the green technology innovation of enterprises by providing support and strengthening supervision. Further research shows that the uniformity between the central and local governments and environmental attention pressure from higher-level government reinforce the influence of local environmental attention on corporate green innovation.

PurposePromoting enterprises' green innovation is vital to realize the sustainable growth of cities and environmental protection and the rise of urban housing prices might affect the green innovation of enterprises to a certain extent. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.Design/methodology/approachBased on the data of listed companies and urban housing prices of main cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper examines the impact of housing prices on enterprises' green innovation and analyzes the mechanism of rising housing prices on enterprises' green innovation.FindingsThe rise of urban housing prices can significantly promote the quality of green innovation of enterprises, but it has no significant impact on the quantity of green innovation. The heterogeneity test results show that the rising house prices have a more significant role in promoting the green innovation of non-state-owned enterprises, enterprises listed on the main board, enterprises in the central and western regions, and enterprises in non-first-tier cities. The mechanism research finds that the rise of urban housing prices has a financing relief effect and cost-pushing effect on the green innovation of enterprises.Originality/valueFirstly, it thoroughly examines the influence of housing prices on corporate green innovation. Second, it explores the differential impact of housing prices on enterprises' green innovation based on variations among enterprises and regions, offering valuable insights for the government to formulate proper policy. Lastly, it elucidates the influencing mechanism of housing prices on enterprise green innovation from the perspectives of corporate financing and costs, providing empirical support for enterprises to appropriately perceive the opportunities and challenges posed by rising housing prices and actively promote green innovation.

Economic agglomeration ( EA ), a core feature of urbanization in developing countries, presents both opportunities and challenges for achieving carbon reduction targets. We employ the fixed-effects panel models for 270 prefecture-level cities in China, between 2006 and 2019, to examine how EA affects CO 2 emissions in developing contexts. We find the following results: (1) EA can decrease the overall emissions of Chinese prefecture-level cities and facilitate them to meet their carbon emission reduction targets. (2) Green technology innovation and financial development mediate the emission reduction effects of EA . (3) Heterogeneity analysis shows that EA significantly reduces emissions in eastern and central cities but not in western regions. The impact is more pronounced in cities of large and high economic development, and substantially greater in low-carbon pilot cities compared to non-pilot cities. Our findings provide empirical evidence for policymakers in developing countries to concert EA and low-carbon emissions through green innovation and financial development.

The process of sustainable urban development faces complex and severe environmental problems. Therefore, enhancing urban ecological resilience (UER) has become an urgent and critical goal. In this study, the establishment of national forest cities (NFCs) in China is regarded as an exogenous shock event, and the impact of NFCs on UER and its mechanisms are investigated based on data from 292 cities spanning 2003 to 2021 using a difference-in-difference method. It is found that NFCs can significantly enhance UER, and this conclusion holds after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis shows that NFCs can effectively strengthen environmental regulations, upgrade industrial structures, promote green innovation, and thus enhance UER. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effect of NFC on UER is more significant in low-carbon non-pilot cities, cities with higher levels of industrial development, and cities in central and western China. Spatial spillover analysis shows that NFCs can effectively improve the ecological resilience of neighboring cities. Therefore, NFCs should be continuously implemented and optimized to establish a long-term mechanism for urban forests to enhance ecological resilience.

Could environmental courts reduce carbon intensity? Evidence from cities of China

Digitization, perception of policy uncertainty, and corporate green innovation: A study from China

In this paper, we analyze data for 240 prefecture-level cities in China from 2000 to 2020. We use the Services Trade Pilot (STP) as a quasi-natural experiment and construct a multi-period DID model to investigate the impact of the STP on the green innovation of firms within Chinese cities. The STP has a significant positive effect on the green innovation capacity of firms located in each city. However, the impact of STP on promoting green innovation varies depending on the economic development level and region. It has a more significant effect in cities with higher economic development levels and eastern China, compared to cities with lower economic development levels and in the western region.

Atmospheric environmental resources and corporate green innovation: Blessing or curse of the weather?

Environmental regulations may promote regional ecological evolution, but they also increase the need for financing green innovation activities. This study uses panel data from prefecture-level cities in China to examine the impact of fintech and environmental regulation on regional green innovation in the digital economy era. Empirical evidence shows that fintech significantly promotes regional green innovation, and fintech has a positive interaction effect with environmental regulation. While the evidence generally supports the role of environmental regulations in promoting green innovation, the evidence is insignificant in some models. The synergistic effect of fintech and environmental regulation on utility model green innovation is significant, but not on invention type green innovation. Climate policy, as a carbon regulatory policy, does not directly lead to green innovation, but it significantly collaborates with fintech to promote green innovation. The effects of fintech and environmental regulation on green innovation also have heterogeneity effects between resource-based and non-resource-based cities, and non-resource-based cities have a greater effect on achieving green innovation through fintech and environmental regulation. Our findings contribute to optimizing the coordination system between financial and environmental policies, thereby driving regional green innovation development with fintech in the digital age.