Energy regulation and industrial robot adoption: The role of human capital

Energy regulations play a crucial role in enhancing firms' energy efficiency and environmental performance. However, their unintended effects, particularly on the adoption of industrial robots, have received limited attention. This paper leverages the implementation of China's Top 10,000 energy-consuming enterprises (TECE) program as an exogenous shock and employs a difference-in-differences methodology to assess the impact of energy regulations on industrial robot adoption and its potential underlying mechanisms. Additionally, the study examines the moderating role of human capital in shaping this relationship. To this end, we constructed firmlevel variables for industrial robot usage and the intensity of energy regulation by integrating multiple microlevel datasets. Our findings indicate that energy regulations significantly reduce the usage of industrial robots. Specifically, the TECE project decreased the probability of regulated firms adopting industrial robots by 0.09 percentage points. Given that only 2.8 % of firms in the sample period used industrial robots, this impact is considerable. The deterioration of financial performance and increased R&D investment induced by energy regulations are likely channels for this effect. Furthermore, the energy regulation's negative impact is more pronounced for firms with higher levels of human capital. This is because such firms are more inclined to increase R&D investment, thereby crowding out investment in industrial robots.