Government Governance,Environmental Regulation and Green Process Innovation

Abstract

The influence of environmental regulation on technological innovation has been a central issue in the academic field. The effective implementation of state environments policy and the encouragement of green process innovation of local enterprises by local governments playing an important role in the coordinated development of economy and ecology,are directly related to regional economic growth quality and environmental governance effect. Based on the theories of environmental regulation and technological innovation,this paper examines empirically the role of local government governance in the influence of environmental regulation on the green process innovation of enterprises through the panel data of 30 provinces from 2000 to 2013 in China. The empirical results show that local government governance and environmental regulation significantly affect green process innovation of enterprises; total governance quality of local governments,& the protection level of intellectual property and the producers' legitimate rights play the significantly positive role in the effect of environmental regulation on green process innovation. The conclusions argue that facing with the objective reality of more and more serious environmental pollution in China,both of the improvement of local government governance quality and the formulation of environmental regulation policies are equally important to promote green process innovation of enterprises.