The Impact of Different Environmental Regulatory Tools on Technological Innovation in China’s Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

There are different types of environmental regulation tools, such as command and control, economic incentive and public participation, and the combination of environmental regulation tools can be divided into command and control and economic incentive, economic incentive and public participation, command and control and public participation and so on. Using the panel data of China’s listed manufacturing enterprises from 2010 to 2018, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of three combinations of environmental regulation tools, namely command and control type and economic incentive type, economic incentive type and public participation type, command and control type and public participation type, on the technological innovation of China’s manufacturing enterprises. The results show that the combination of command and control type and economic incentive type, economic incentive type and public participation type can promote the technological innovation of manufacturing enterprises, while the combination of command and control type and public participation type is not conducive to the technological innovation of China’s manufacturing enterprises. Regression is conducted with economic incentives of Environmental regulation as the threshold variable, found the command control type and the public participation in environmental regulation on manufacturing technology innovation is double threshold effect, and with the increase of the economic strength of the motivational tool, command control type and the public participating the effect of environmental regulation tools are also enhanced. The research in this paper shows that when environmental regulation of China’s manufacturing enterprises is carried out, the combination of command and control type and economic incentive type and economic incentive type and public participation type can play a role in promoting technological innovation in China’s manufacturing industry.