The Carbon Emissions Trading Policy of China: Does It Really Promote the Enterprises' Green Technology Innovations?

Xiaoqi Li; Dingfei Guo; Chao Feng

doi:10.3390/ijerph192114325

The Carbon Emissions Trading Policy of China: Does It Really Promote the Enterprises' Green Technology Innovations?

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 3;19(21):14325. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192114325.

Authors

Xiaoqi Li¹, Dingfei Guo¹, Chao Feng¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, China.

Abstract

The carbon emissions trading policy has profound impacts on the production and operation of enterprises. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of the carbon emissions trading policy on enterprises' green technology innovations by using PSM-DID models. The results showed that: (1) the carbon emissions trading policy has a facilitating effect on green technology innovation of China's enterprises in pilot cities; (2) there is significant spatial heterogeneity in this effect and it is extremely beneficial to enterprises' green technology innovations in eastern China; and (3) the trading policy is proved to have significant positive effects on green technology innovations of non-state and non-high-tech enterprises, while it has no effects on that of state-owned and high-tech enterprises. The above findings were corroborated by the placebo test and other methods.

Keywords: PSM−DID; carbon emission trading policy; green invention patent applications; green technology innovations.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Carbon* / analysis
China
Inventions*
Policy

Substances

Carbon

Grants and funding

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72003017), the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19ZDA082), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2021CDJSKCG19).