The impact of technological innovation on air pollution: Firm-level evidence from China

Fenglong Chen, Meichang Wang and Zhengning Pu

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2022, vol. 177, issue C

Abstract: Technological innovation and environmental pollution are two contemporary issues in China. This paper analyses firm innovation's impact on air pollution using large, firm-level data sets from the Chinese industrial sector during the 1998–2012 period. The empirical results indicate that innovation significantly reduces firms’ pollution discharges, and that the causal relationship still exists when propensity score matching, instrumental variables, and other approaches are used to address endogeneity. Further analysis indicates that innovation effects on firms’ air pollution are heterogeneous across different industrial sectors, locations, and ownership types. The mechanism test reveals that decreasing energy consumption and misallocation of resources accounted for the observed pattern. This study's results hold important implications for reducing air pollution to improve environmental quality in China.

Keywords: Technological innovation; Air pollution; Energy consumption; Resource mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162522000531
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:tefoso:v:177:y:2022:i:c:s0040162522000531

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121521

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().