Government environmental concerns and corporate green innovation: Evidence from heavy-polluting enterprises in China

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of government environmental concerns on green innovation and whether this has a "leverage effect" or a "crowding-out effect." This study employs a two-way fixed-effects model to conduct an empirical test using panel data from 2010 to 2020 on Chinese firms listed in heavy-polluting industries. The results suggest that an increase in government environmental concerns can promote corporate green innovation. However, government environmental concerns primarily stimulate strategic innovation rather than substantive innovation. After a series of robustness and endogeneity tests, the conclusions of this paper still hold. Corporate green innovation induced by government environmental concerns is not the "leverage effect" superimposed on existing innovation activities but the "crowding-out effect" of other technological innovation. The heterogeneity tests in this paper indicate that the impact is more pronounced for firms with poorer environmental conditions, stronger political connections, and richer executive backgrounds.