Outward Foreign Direct Investment and Industrial Structure Upgrading: The Mediating Role of Reverse Green Technology Innovation, the Moderating Role of R&D Investment and Environmental Regulation

Guangyuan Xing () and Hao Dong
Additional contact information
Guangyuan Xing: School of Economics and Finance, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China
Hao Dong: School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Based on the provincial panel data from 2004 to 2019, this paper constructs a more comprehensive industrial structure upgrading coefficient and uses a moderated mediation model to verify the mechanism of OFDI reverse green innovation technology on industrial upgrading. It is found that OFDI has a reverse green technology innovation effect, which can positively promote China’s industrial upgrading. From the perspective of a moderated mediating effect, the increase of domestic R&D investment is conducive to shortening the technological gap with developed countries, and the enhancement of domestic environmental regulation also encourages multinational enterprises to implement green technology cooperation. Both of them strengthen the reverse green technology innovation effect of OFDI, and correspondingly have a greater promoting effect on the upgrading of industrial structure. The reverse green technology innovation of OFDI mainly promotes strategic green innovation of noninvention types, but the enhancement of R&D capability and the improvement of environmental regulation can strengthen the reverse substantive green innovation of OFDI. After endogenous processing and replacing the core explanatory variables, the results are still significant.

Keywords: foreign direct investment; industrial structure upgrading; green technology innovation; moderated mediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/9062/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/9062/ (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:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:9062-:d:1163359

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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