Green Innovation In China Research Articles

Drivers of Changing Green Innovation in China: A Comparative Analysis of Invention and Utility Model Patents Granted

Drivers of Changing Green Innovation in China: A Comparative Analysis of Invention and Utility Model Patents Granted

Government subsidy and corporate green innovation - Does board governance play a role?

This study attempts to uncover the curvilinear relationship between government subsidies and corporate green innovation in China's new energy vehicle (NEV) industry, and investigate the moderating effect of board governance within this relationship. Using a strong balanced panel data from all NEV firms that have acquired government subsidy (GS) from 2013 to 2018, this study found government subsidy exhibit a U-shaped relationship to corporate green innovation (CGI). It also reveals that some facets of board governance (BG) significantly enhanced this U-shaped relationship, including board gender diversity, board age diversity, CEO duality and board educational level. Our study specifically suggests that policymakers should incorporate such diversity indicators as the proportion of female directors into investment evaluation standards (e.g. corporate governance, environmental, social and governance, and sustainable investment), in order to promote environmental benefits and societal equality and enhance women's empowerment.

How does anti-corruption affect enterprise green innovation in China's energy-intensive industries?

Rampant corruption exists in China's energy-intensive industries. However, we know little about the nexus of corruption and enterprise green innovation in China's energy-intensive industries. This paper discusses the impact of anti-corruption on enterprises' green innovation and its effect margin. Analyzing the panel data of Chinese listed enterprises in energy-intensive industries from 2009 to 2017, we find that anti-corruption played a positive role in stimulating enterprises' green innovation investments in energy-intensive industries. Then we adopt the instrumental variable approach and difference-in-differences model to alleviate the endogeneity problem. Moreover, we find that research and development investments from state-owned, high-tech enterprises and enterprises in the regions with more government intervention or weaker intellectual property protection were more prominent after the anti-corruption campaign. Finally, political connection played an intermediary role in this process, in which only the government-official political connection worked. Our results highlight the roles of enterprises' attributes and environmental characteristics as important factors in the relationship between anti-corruption and green innovation investments. Policymakers should enhance the control of corruption to boost green innovation in energy-intensive industries.

How does venture capital spur the innovation of environmentally friendly firms? Evidence from China

Previous literature has discussed the relationship between venture capital (VC) and green innovation; however, green innovation is seldom noted as having been created by both environmentally friendly and pollution-intensive firms, even though most VCs are actually invested only in environmentally friendly firms. Thus, this study focuses on the relationship between VC and the green innovation of environmentally friendly firms. The analysis combines traditional patent data with homogenous citation data to jointly examine the quantity and quality of VC-funded firms' green innovation. Results suggest that VC support not only improves firms' success rate of patent application but also increases the innovation “value” represented by increased citation. The Chinese government has asked government VC (GVC) to be a long-term strategic investment for environmentally friendly firms. However, we found that GVC negatively affects green innovation, which may be caused by the risk aversion and adverse selection of the GVC manager. By comparing the roles of experienced foreign VC and full-sample VC, we confirmed that the investment skills of developed countries could enhance the quantity and quality of green innovation in China.

How to Restrain Regulatory Capture and Promote Green Innovation in China. An Analysis Based on Evolutionary Game Theory

In response to severe environmental challenges, green innovation (GI) has been thoroughly considered by various governments. Although China has promulgated many environmental policies to promote environmental governance, regulatory capture and the lack of independent external supervisors lead to a challenging future. This study employs an evolutionary game method to explore how the policy burden and media affect decision-making between local governments and manufacturing enterprises. On this basis, the simulation method is used to examine critical factors that affect regulatory capture and GI. The results show that the policy burden is the main factor that causes regulatory capture. When the policy burden exceeds a certain threshold, it will cause regulatory capture and hinder GI. Moreover, media, as an external supervisor, can restrain regulatory capture and promote GI significantly. Specifically, when the capacity of media supervision is high enough, due to the positive role of the media, it will inhibit the negative effects of policy burdens. Finally, combined with the different development stages of China’s green industry, the corresponding policy recommendations are given. These results extend the research of regulatory capture and provide a reference for governments to promote environmental governance in practice.

Market-oriented green innovation model: conceptualisation and scale development of disruptive green innovation

ABSTRACT Market-oriented green innovation is receiving increasing attention. However, due to the dominance of traditional technologies and the underdevelopment of green technology capabilities, the speed at which green innovation enters the market is slow. Overcoming competitive disadvantages for latecomer green innovations has become a key issue to be solved. Disruptive innovation theory provides latecomers with opportunities for leapfrog development. Combined with the theory of disruptive innovation and green innovation, this study proposes a new model for market-oriented green innovation – disruptive green innovation. This study then attempts to develop a scale of disruptive green innovation. Through qualitative methods such as literature deduction, interview induction and expert screening, the initial items of disruptive green innovation are set up. Through quantitative methods such as pretests and large sample tests, the initial items are refined and analyzed. Finally, the scale of disruptive green innovation composed of seven items is developed. This study not only provides important theoretical guidance for the market strategy deployment of green innovation in China and clear measurement tools for follow-up research but also provides important practical enlightenment for green innovation to catch up in the fierce market competition.

Environmental Regulations and Corporate Green Innovation in China: The Role of City Leaders' Promotion Pressure.

China and other emerging market countries have suffered from the problem of environmental pollution while developing rapidly in the past few decades. In recent years, many countries have introduced strict environmental regulations in order to achieve sustainable development. This paper discusses the relationship between environmental regulations and corporate green innovation from the perspective of regional leaders’ promotion pressure. The empirical results show that direct policy regulation within the region stimulates green innovation on the part of enterprises, and the promotion pressure of city leaders has a further positive moderating effect on the positive correlation between environmental regulations and enterprises’ green innovation. The conclusion of the study proves that a strict environmental policy can promote the effectiveness of an environmental performance appraisal system in the sustainable development plans of cities and enterprises. This paper not only reveals the influence path of official promotion pressure on the sustainable development of enterprises in the administrative area from the micro perspective but also sheds some light that may improve government governance and promote the transformation of enterprises.

State ownership and green innovation in China: The contingent roles of environmental and organizational factors

Green innovation has been recognized as a strategic priority for enhancing corporate image and achieving superior performance, yet few studies have examined the impact of state ownership on green innovation in emerging economies. Building on the institutional theory and resource-based view, this study investigates how state ownership affects green innovation within a given institutional environment and in combination with firm characteristics. Using panel data for listed Chinese firms from 2008 through 2016, our findings indicate that state ownership positively affects a firm's green innovation. Moreover, the facilitating role of state ownership in green innovation is strengthened in regions with advanced legal development, for firms with sufficient resources, or when a board chair possesses functional experience. These findings provide novel insights into how alignment between state ownership, the institutional environment, and organizational features affects green innovation in emerging economies.

China’s New Environmental Protection Law and Green Innovation: Evidence from Prefecture-Level Cities

This paper examines the impact of China’s new environmental protection law on green innovation. Using a large sample of Chinese prefecture-level cities for the 2010–2016 period and the difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, we provide strong evidence that the new environmental protection law promotes green innovation. This finding is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. The micromechanism analysis shows that the new environmental protection law can promote green innovation by imposing stricter financial constraints on enterprises in high-pollution industries and increasing their incentives for green innovation to meet green credit requirements. Further, we find that the impact of the new environmental protection law on green innovation is more prominent in prefecture-level cities with a lower level of banking competition and for prefecture-level cities with stronger intellectual property protection. Overall, these findings suggest that the new environmental protection law has played an important role in promoting green innovation in China. To improve the effect of the new environmental protection law on green innovation, the government can consider lowering banking competition and strengthening intellectual property protection.

Demand for green finance: Resolving financing constraints on green innovation in China

This paper investigates the effects of financing constraints on prompting green innovations using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the period 2001–2017. Also, we explore how green finance policies resolve financing constraints of firms to green innovation. The capability of green innovation is found to be impaired when firms face higher financing constraints, and privately owned enterprises tend to be more vulnerable than state-owned ones in this regard. Although green finance policies can effectively ease financing restraints on green innovation overall, green credits are less likely to be available to privately owned enterprises. However, these enterprises which are deeply affected by financing constraints have relatively high innovation capabilities. We suggest the government to provide more supports to privately owned enterprises for investing in green projects. Further, both financial institutions and privately owned enterprises should be required to disclose more information on green credits and green projects, respectively. In addition, the China Banking Regulatory Commission should design a synthetic mechanism for evaluating green performance.

Identification of Driving Factors of Scientific and Technological Innovation in the New Material Industry Based on the Theory of Complex Adaptive System: Taking the Construction of Green Innovation System as an Example

Complex adaptation systems are the main development direction of China’s current green innovation research. New material industry is one of the key entry points to accelerate the construction of modern industrial system and promote innovation, green, and efficient development. Under the requirements of China’s current low-carbon development, China’s green innovation system is developing rapidly. Green innovation complicates traditional innovation models and their functions and improves economic development. The purpose of this paper is to study the theoretical analysis framework of applying complex adaptive systems and to analyze and calculate the characteristics of the current status of green innovation systems in multiple industries in China’s manufacturing industry. Analysis is as follows. The experimental group and the control group are set for comparison, and the data are organized by applying complex adaptive system theory and data analysis methods. Experimental data show that the coordinated development of the green innovation systems in various industries in China is not balanced, with a difference of more than three times; the parameters of the various green innovation systems within the industry are unbalanced, and the difference is more than five times. The experimental results show that the green innovation subject can strategically interact by adjusting the ratio of resource allocation through the constructed green innovation system model. The green innovation system with complex adaptive system theory is conducive to the development of the green system. It can save about 23% of green innovation time and improve efficiency by about 15%, to promote the development of green innovation in China.

How to drive green innovation in China's mining enterprises? Under the perspective of environmental legitimacy and green absorptive capacity

Environmental legitimacy and green absorptive capacity immensely contribute to ensuring green innovation; however, their integration in driving green innovation in mining enterprises (MEs) remains unexplored. This study surveys 133 MEs in China's mining sector and uses multi-regression analysis to investigate the relationships between environmental legitimacy, organisational factors of senior management cognition and green strategic orientation, green absorptive capacity, and green innovation in MEs. We find that: (1) Environmental legitimacy, which includes formal and informal institutional pressure, positively impacts senior management cognition and green strategic orientation in mining enterprises. (2) Senior management cognition and green strategic orientation have a positive association with MEs' green innovation. They also have a positive mediating effect on the relationship between environmental legitimacy and green innovation. (3) Green absorptive capacity can positively moderate the relationship between senior management cognition and green innovation, and between green strategic orientation and green innovation. (4) The size of the enterprise, as a control variable, has a significant correlation with green innovation. Finally, our study proposes four leading policy suggestions for MEs and policymakers, including building a comprehensive green innovation evaluation framework involving multiple participants, reinforcing the executive's green commitments and proactive green strategic orientation, and establishing a company-wide green knowledge learning system and external green knowledge cooperation.

Will Public Environmental Concerns Foster Green Innovation in China’s Automotive Industry? An Empirical Study Based on Multi-Sourced Data Streams

This study explores the impact of public concerns on green innovation in China’s automotive industry and examines whether the effect varies based on firm size, ownership, and time phase. The study investigates 151 automobile enterprises and provides a novel, large-scale, and data-based perspective and estimation method for exploring critical factors of green innovation. By applying transition probabilities matrix (TPM) model, this paper finds that for different-sizes automotive enterprises there are significant differences in innovation sustainability, non-innovation sustainability, and liquidity between innovation and non-innovation, and such differences also exist for state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises. Then, based on the dynamic panel random probit (DPRP) model, the paper further analyzes the possible reasons for these differences, and particularly focuses on exploring the impact of public environmental concern on the environmental technology innovation. The empirical results show: 1) public concerns encourages green innovation emerging in all automotive firms, but only affects innovation persistence in medium and large companies. 2) public concerns encourages non-innovator state-owned companies to become innovators and motivates them to maintain continuous innovation. 3) the impact of public concerns changes over time. In the periods of 2002–2007 and 2012–2013, the role of public concerns is not significant. However, in the 2007–2012 period, public concerns significantly stimulate enterprises to move from non-innovators to innovators and promotes continuous innovation.

A research on the efficiency of regional green innovation in China—Based on DEA-SBM model and Malmquist index method

This paper selects panel data of 29 provinces in mainland China from 2010-2017 and combines a DEA-SBM model that takes into account non-desired outputs and the Malmquis index method to study the static and dynamic changes of regional green innovation efficiency. It is found that the overall level of green innovation efficiency in China is low, but the overall trend is on the rise and there is more room for improvement. The differences in green innovation efficiency values among the three regions of East, West and Central Asia are obvious, with the eastern region developing at a higher level than the central and western regions, and the gap is gradually narrowing. Technological progress is a key factor affecting total factor productivity.

Heterogeneous impacts of environmental regulations and foreign direct investment on green innovation across different regions in China

Green innovation (GI) is an important way to realize the sustainable development. This paper contributes to the existing literature by analyzing the effects of different environmental regulations on green innovation from a heterogeneous perspective. We also compare the impacts of indigenous innovation input and foreign technology spillover on green innovation. The dataset of this paper covers a panel of China's 30 provinces from 2003 to 2017. The results of Systematic Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) show that command-and-control regulation (CER) and informal regulation (IER) have significant “Porter's effect” on green innovation while market-based regulation (MER) negatively affects green innovation in China. Inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) plays a positive role in developing China's green innovation thus, validating the “Pollution Halo hypothesis”. Outward direct investment (OFDI) has a reverse green technique effect on China's green innovation. In addition, the positive effect of indigenous innovation input on green innovation is larger than that of foreign technology spillover from IFDI and OFDI. Moreover, the strengthening of CER weakens the positive effect of IFDI on green innovation. By contrast, the increase of IER can promote the reverse green technology spillover effect of OFDI on green innovation. On the basis of results, the government should attract green inward FDI and invest on foreign technology-intensive industries to obtain green technology spillover and stimulate green innovation.

Evaluation of the Green Innovation Efficiency of Chinese Industrial Enterprises: Research Based on the Three-Stage Chain Network SBM Model

Green innovation is an important capability for an enterprise’s sustainable development. Evaluating the green innovation efficiency of China’s industrial enterprises can greatly affect its improvement. Considering the existing research results of green innovation efficiency evaluation, this paper added the impact of environmental factors in the technology industrialization stage. Various negative environmental externality indicators produced by industrial enterprise activities were incorporated into the undesired output, and an index system and model were constructed for evaluating the green innovation efficiency of China’s industrial enterprises. Combined with the actual data, a three-stage chain network SBM (slack-based measure) model was used to dynamically evaluate and analyze the industrial enterprises in 29 Chinese provinces. The results show that the overall efficiency of green innovation in China’s industrial enterprises has an upward trend, and the rise fluctuates during the technological development, achievement transformation, and industrialization stages. In the three major regions of China, industrial enterprises in the eastern area have the highest green innovation efficiency, and the industrial enterprises in the west and central regions have lower efficiencies. Based on the evaluation results, the corresponding countermeasures are proposed.

Spatial-temporal heterogeneity of green innovation in China

The whole world is facing the urgent issue of balancing economic development and ecological conservation. The fulfillment of the solution requires green innovation at the regional level. However, the heterogeneity of green innovation is obvious in different regions. To explore ways at effectively improving the level of regional green innovation in China, the research develops decomposition analysis based on the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model to identify the driving factors of green innovation. We also take the Geographical and Temporal Weighted Regression (GTWR) model to explore the driving factors of spatial-temporal heterogeneity of green innovation in China. The main results are as follows. Research and development (R&D) efficiency play a dominant role for increasing regional green patent applications, while environmental regulation contributes the most to a decline of regional green patent applications during 2003–2017. Various determinants of green patent applications exhibit spatial-temporal heterogeneity, such as the coefficients of influencing factors for each province in 2017 being more significant than the same coefficients in 2003. Beijing’s coefficient of R&D efficiency is the largest, while the coefficient of economic development for Shanxi is the largest. The findings herein provide detailed insight for China’s policymakers to effectively improve the level of regional green innovation domestically, which is of constructive significance to narrow the gap of regional green innovation and realize the coordinated and sustainable development of economy.

Is environmental regulation effective in promoting the quantity and quality of green innovation?

Green innovation (GI) is an important means of achieving a win-win outcome in the form of both economic development and environmental protection. Using a unique Chinese Patent Census Database to identify the quantity and quality of GI in each province and panel data for Chinese industrial sector in 30 provinces from 2002 to 2015, we investigated the impact of environmental regulation (ER) on GI in China. This study presents the first attempt to identify green innovation quality in China. Empirical results show that there is an inverted-U relationship between ER and GI. The heterogenous effects are further investigated in order to obtain more accurate policy implications. The results indicate that the impact of ER on GI is insignificant in the central and western regions, implying the necessity of adjusting ER policies in these regions. Second, the inverted U-shaped relationship between ER and GI only occurred in provinces with high state-owned enterprise (SOE) ratio, figuring out the special role of Chinese SOEs in promoting GI. Third, the impact of ER on GI is insignificant in regions with high levels of pollution, indicating high potential of green innovation and policy adjustments there.

Confession or justification: The effects of environmental disclosure on corporate green innovation in China

AbstractAs one type of voluntary environmental regulations, environmental disclosure plays an important role in promoting sustainable development of enterprises by enhancing their environmental awareness. Based on the social responsibility and annual reports published by heavily polluting listed companies in China between 2007 and 2016, this article investigates their environmental disclosure and assesses the impact on their green innovation activities as well as its influence mechanisms. Text analysis is used to measure the environmental disclosure by way of three dimensions including environmental investment and management, environmental supervision and agency certification, and environmental performance and governance. The results of the Poisson regression model for panel data show that environmental disclosure has significantly encouraged green innovations carried out by heavily polluting listed companies in China during the past decade and this result is consistent with a variety of robustness checks. Besides, the mediation effect test demonstrates that environmental disclosure stimulated green innovations of heavily polluting listed companies by expanding their financing channels, promoting their product sales, and raising media attention.

The evolutionary process of disruptive green innovation in China: evidence from the electric bicycle sector

ABSTRACT To achieve market-oriented green innovation, this paper explores the evolutionary path and driving factors of disruptive green innovation using an exploratory case study in which data are collected from the Luyuan electric bicycle company in China. The results reveal that disruptive green innovation is a dynamic and cumulative process. Entrepreneurship drives to open new markets. Competition within the industry drives to expand the new markets. Competition among industries and the subsidy policy drive to encroach on mainstream low-end markets. Technology and marketing drive to encroach on mainstream high-end markets. To scholars, our research contributes to the literature on green innovation by uncovering the application of disruptive innovation theory in the field of green innovation. To practitioners in firms, this evolutionary process can function as a frame of reference, enabling the tailoring of a market-oriented strategy for green innovation.