The role of robot adoption in green innovation: Evidence from China

Jiawu Gan, Lihua Liu, Gang Qiao and Qin Zhang

Economic Modelling, 2023, vol. 119, issue C

Abstract: Green innovative activities are important for sustainable business development and green growth. However, little attention has been given to the role of technology adoption in green innovation. In this study, using a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing companies over the time period 2011–2019, we find that the adoption of industrial robots positively affects green innovation and the results survive when using multiple robustness tests and addressing endogenous issues. Moreover, the possible mechanisms are labor cost saving and human capital structure adjustment. Our findings are more significant for firms facing more stringent environmental regulations, firms in high-tech industries, firms owning high levels of investment in R&D activities, and Non-SOEs. On the whole, this study provides the first firm-level economic consequences assessment of robot adoption in terms of green innovation.

Keywords: Robot adoption; Labor cost; Human capital; Green innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J30 O33 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999322003650
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:119:y:2023:i:c:s0264999322003650

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2022.106128

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().