How do environmental regulation and technological innovation affect the sustainable development of marine economy: New evidence from China’s coastal provinces and cities

Abstract

As marine economy has entered a new normal, the transformation and upgrading of marine economy has reached a crossroads in coastal regions, and there is an urgent need to change the development mode and the growth momentum of marine economy. Exploring reasonable environmental regulation means and appropriate environmental regulation intensity to promote green technological innovation and lead the transformation of marine economy is the only way for China's marine sustainable development in the future. Through theoretical analysis and empirical tests, this study examines the influential mechanisms of environmental regulation and technological innovation on GTFP of marine economy to provide a theoretical basis for local government and enterprises to make decisions under environmental regulation. The empirical process adopts a direct effect, an intermediary effect, and a threshold effect model based on panel data from 11 provinces and cities in China's coastal regions. The results show that China's marine environmental regulation is still in its initial stage, which is not conducive to the improvement of GTFP of marine economy. Technological innovation plays an intermediary role between environmental regulation and GTFP of marine economy, but the intermediary effect is very small-only 0.0920, so there is still significant room to improve. During the sample period, taking marine technological innovation as the threshold variable, environmental regulation has significant double threshold effect of technological innovation on GTFP of marine economy. Different levels of technological innovation decide which effect, either the “offset effect” or the “compensation effect” dominates. Finally, this paper puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations.