Implementation of enterprises' green technology innovation under market-based environmental regulation: An evolutionary game approach

With the increasing carbon neutral targets claimed by responsible countries, many research has been done to investigate the impact of environmental regulation on green technology innovation (GTI). However, there still remains a gap at micro level that takes enterprise as research subject to figure out an effective regulatory mechanism that supports the development of GTI. Since the integration of technology and finance is the main trend in future progress of GTI, it is meaningful to study the decision-making behavior and influencing factors of heterogenous enterprises and banks under market-based environmental regulation policies. This paper established a tripartite evolutionary game model among two types of enterprises with distinct Research & Development (R&D) ability and banks. The results show that: (1) the scenario when subsidy to enterprises is greater than to banks leads to a better situation; (2) penalty has more significant influence on enterprises than subsidies at the early stage, and enterprises' strategic choices of independent R&D is more reliable on subsidies; (3) when the price gap between different levels of technology increases, enterprises are inclined to continuously invest in green R&D, while it will restrain enterprises' technology introduction behavior.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the decision-making behavior and influencing factors of heterogenous enterprises and banks under market-based environmental regulation policies. The results show that a scenario with greater subsidy to enterprises than to banks leads to a better situation; penalty has a more significant influence on enterprises compared to subsidies, and enterprises rely more on subsidies for independent R&D; when the price gap between different levels of technology increases, enterprises tend to continuously invest in green R&D but it may restrain technology introduction behavior.