Will green credit promote corporate environmental protection investment?

Abstract

As a national macro policy, green credit is put forward in essence to guide the green transformation of enterprises. While realizing industrial upgrading and economic growth, the state should not ignore the problem of ecological environment. "Two high and one surplus" enterprises are often the key force to promote the development of the national economy, and the uncertainty of environmental protection investment brings difficulties to the decision-making of these enterprises. Therefore, can this policy promote "two high and one surplus" enterprises to increase investment in environmental protection? Based on the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020, this paper takes the implementation of "Green Credit Guidelines (2012)" as a quasi-natural experiment, using differences-in-differences model to explore the impact of this policy on environmental protection investment of "two high and one surplus" enterprises. The empirical results show that the green credit policy significantly reduces the environmental protection investment of "two high and one surplus" enterprises, and the policy effect has stronger inhibitory on private enterprises and enterprises located in regions that have a higher level of financial development. The research of this paper enriches the influencing factors of enterprise environmental governance behavior and the micro evidence of the effect of green credit policy, as well as enlightenment for promoting the construction of ecological civilization and realizing green development.