How does environmental regulation promote technological innovations in the industrial sector? Evidence from Chinese provincial panel data

Promoting technological innovations by environmental regulation is one of the essential means to achieve green transformation. This study investigates the effect of environmental regulation on technological innovations based on the provincial panel data of industrial sectors in China during the years 2005-2015. The two-way fixed-effect panel data model is used to investigate the marginal and heterogeneous impacts empirically. Results indicate a U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and technological innovations. In the short-term, environmental regulation has an "offsetting effect" on the research and innovation capacity of China's industrial sector. However, with the deepening of environmental regulation, it forces the industry to reduce the cost of pollution control by improving technological innovation capacity, thus creating a "compensation effect". Results also show that environmental regulation policies changed the location and industry selection of foreign capital, which weakened the positive effect of FDI on technological innovations, indicating the "pollution shelter" effect. From the perspective of different types of enterprises, due to the higher cost of energy conservation and emission reduction, environmental regulation is detrimental to the technological innovations of state-owned enterprises. In particular, we find that industries with a higher degree of market competition and higher human capital investment tend to have stronger technological innovation capabilities.