Does air pollution collaborative governance promote green technology innovation? Evidence from China

With the data of Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2004 to 2017, this paper builds a difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of air pollution collaborative governance on green technology innovation. The main results show that air pollution collaborative governance promotes green technology innovation, and a series of robustness tests also verify this conclusion. Patent heterogeneity analysis suggests that air pollution collaborative governance increases the number of green utility model patents, but has no obvious impact on green invention patents. In terms of enterprise heterogeneity, air pollution collaborative governance can effectively stimulate the non-heavy-polluting enterprises to innovate green technology, but the incentive effect on heavy-polluting enterprises is not evident. Moreover, by constructing a mediating effect model and a moderating effect model, mechanism analysis reveals that R&D investment plays a positive mediating role in the impact of air pollution collaborative governance on green technology innovation, and the increase of government subsidy also enhances the promotion effect of air pollution collaborative governance on green technology innovation.

Automated summary

Based on the data of Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2004 to 2017, this study examines the impact of air pollution collaborative governance on green technology innovation. The results indicate that air pollution collaborative governance promotes green technology innovation, especially in increasing the number of green utility model patents. However, it has no significant impact on green invention patents. The study also reveals that non-heavy-polluting enterprises are more stimulated to innovate green technology compared to heavy-polluting enterprises.