环境管理体系认证与中国制造业企业出口“增量提质”

Environmental Management System Certification and Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises’ Export

推动中国对外贸易“增量提质”,是构筑高水平国际循环参与模式、塑造出口竞争新优势的关键。本文借助网络爬虫技术收集并整理了2008—2014年中国制造业企业环境管理体系认证(ISO14001认证)数据集,并将该数据集与多个微观数据库进行匹配;综合采用倾向得分匹配法与双重差分法,从微观层面实证考察了ISO14001认证对企业出口行为的影响及其内在作用机制。研究表明,ISO14001认证在显著提升企业出口数量的同时,有效改进了企业出口质量。机制分析发现,企业进行ISO14001认证,一方面可通过降低合规成本、缓解监管风险、提高社会声誉等途径直接促进其出口的“增量提质”,另一方面也会引发创新效应,通过促进过程创新与产品创新间接促进其出口的“增量提质”。异质性分析表明,ISO14001认证对企业出口行为的正向影响在主要出口国为低环境标准国家、低对外开放水平地区、重污染行业与规模较小的企业中表现得更为明显。本文的研究不仅有助于深化对自愿型环境规制与企业出口行为关系的认识,而且为加快建立中国出口竞争优势、实现经济高质量发展提供了决策参考。

Promoting the quantity enhancement and quality improvement of China’s foreign trade is the key to build a high-level international circular participation pattern and shape new advantages in export competition.This paper uses python technology to collect the 2008—2014 China manufacturing enterprise environmental management system certification dataset, and then match the former with several database.Subsequently, the propensity scores matching method and the difference-in-difference method are applied to investigate the impact of ISO14001 certification on the export behavior of enterprises and its internal mechanism at the micro level.The results show that ISO14001 certification not only significantly increases the export volume of enterprises, but also effectively improves the export quality of enterprises.The results of mechanism analysis indicate that on one hand, the ISO14001 certification can directly promote the quantity enhancement and quality improvement of export goods by reducing compliance cost, mitigating regulatory risk, and improving social reputation.On the other hand, the ISO14001 certification can also indirectly promote the quantity enhancement and quality improvement of export goods by promoting process innovation and product innovation.Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of ISO14001 certification on the quantity and quality of exports goods is more pronounced for firms which regard the countries with lower environmental standard as main exporting destination, firms in areas with low levels of openness, firms in heavy pollution industries, as well as smaller firms.Our conclusions not only help to deepen the understanding of the relationship between voluntary environmental regulations and firms’ export behavior, but also provide decision-making references for accelerating the establishment of China’s export competitive advantage and achieving high-quality economic development.