Economic Policy Uncertainty, Environmental Regulation, and Green Innovation—An Empirical Study Based on Chinese High-Tech Enterprises

Yue Zhu, Ziyuan Sun, Shiyu Zhang and Xiaolin Wang
Additional contact information
Yue Zhu: School of Economics and Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Ziyuan Sun: School of Economics and Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Shiyu Zhang: School of Economics and Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Xiaolin Wang: School of Economics and Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 18, 1-19

Abstract: As the continuous changes in environmental regulations have a non-negligible impact on the innovation activities of micro subjects, and economic policy uncertainty has become one of the important influencing factors to be considered in the development of enterprises. Therefore, based on the panel data of Chinese high-tech enterprises from 2012–2017, this paper explores the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on firms’ green innovation from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as a moderating variable. The empirical results show that, first, market-incentivized environmental regulation instruments have an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation output, while voluntary environmental regulation produces a significant positive impact. Second, the U-shaped relationship between market-based environmental regulation and innovation output becomes more pronounced when economic policy uncertainty is high. However, it plays a negative moderating role in regulating the relationship between voluntary-based environmental regulation and innovation output. This paper not only illustrates the process of technological innovation by revealing the intrinsic mechanism of environmental regulation on firm innovation, but also provides insights for government in environmental governance from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as well.

Keywords: environmental regulation; green innovation; economic policy uncertainty; moderating effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/18/9503/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/18/9503/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:18:p:9503-:d:631987

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().