政府补贴会让绿色认证机制更有效吗?——基于市场演化的视角

Dose subsidy make green certification more effective?Based on the perspective of green market evolution

加快建设绿色认证机制是助推中国制造业绿色转型的重要战略举措。针对当前很多地方政府采用补贴激励企业申请绿色认证的现象,本文首次从演化的视角,考察了政府补贴的不同模式对绿色认证机制有效性的动态影响。研究发现,政府只有对通过认证的企业给予长期并且较高额度的补贴才有可能提高绿色认证机制对产业绿色转型的促进作用,现实中较为普遍的低强度补贴反而会加大绿色认证被市场淘汰的风险,恶化行业环境绩效。与补贴相比,加强认证机构监管和降低认证费用是提高绿色认证机制有效性的更好政策,加大对企业“漂绿”行为的披露力度则会产生相反效果。基于上述发现,本文从缩小补贴的行业范围、建立多元化的认证机构监管机制、促进认证行业兼并重组和技术创新以及避免环境信息披露陷入“坏消息”定式等方面提出了相应的政策建议。

Accelerating the development of green certification mechanism is an important strategic action to boost the green transformation of Chinese manufacturing industry.Green certification discloses the environmental quality information of enterprises′production to consumers through labels,thus eliminates the information asymmetry in the green product market,and guides the active green production of enterprises by demand growth and premium.Since China′s green certification mechanism is promoted by the state from top to bottom,local governments give subsidies to green certification enterprises to encourage more enterprises to apply for green certification in order to show their own environmental achievements and meet the requirements of the central government.With the financial support of local governments,Chinese enterprises applying for green certification can obtain not only the market benefits in the form of premium,but also the non-market benefits formed by government subsidies.Will government subsidies surely make green certification more effective?From the perspective of evolution,this paper introduces government subsidies into the revenue function of enterprise green certification for the first time,compares and analyzes the evolutionary convergence process of product market and dynamic change of industry environmental performance under three scenarios.As a reference,this paper first investigates the situation where there is no green certification mechanism and the market adjusts itself spontaneously.Secondly,this paper examines enterprise environmental strategies when the government introduces the green certification mechanism,but does not give subsidies to enterprises that pass the green certification.Finally,given enterprise environmental strategy selection under the circumstance of government subsidies for green certification,this paper studies the dynamic effects of enterprise environmental strategy selection under the dual benefits of government subsidies and market premiums,and compares the effects of different initial subsidy intensity and different subsidy duration.The results show that the effectiveness of green certification mechanism can be improved only when the government provides long-term subsidies in large amounts to enterprises that have passed the certification.In reality,many government subsidies are in small amounts,which will increase the risk of green certification being eliminated from the market and deteriorate the environmental performance of the industry.This is because that under the low-intensity subsidy model,green certification does not bring benefits to enterprises.As subsidies signal that the government attaches importance to green certification,however,some enterprises will cater to the government′s preference by applying for certification and then switch to more profitable brown production methods secretly once they are certified.Therefore,at the beginning of implementing the green certification mechanism,low intensity of government subsidies can stimulate the enterprise′s desire to apply for certification.As time goes on,however,false certification will be exposed.Consumers will question the credibility of green certification and the green reputation of enterprises,which will further reduce the profitability of green companies in the market,thus more enterprises will give up green production,eventually inhibiting the green transformation of the industry.This paper further investigates the effects of other policy tools in addition to the subsidies.Compared with subsidies,strengthening regulation to certification bodies and reducing the cost of certification are better policy to increase the effectiveness of green certification mechanism,and increasing information disclosure of enterprise“green”action has the opposite effect.The importance of information disclosure in environmental governance is receiving increasingly more attention,the findings of this paper are of great significance for a rational view of such policies.When disclosing negative information about corporate environmental behavior,the government needs to weigh the damage to the“good news”environmental information disclosure mechanism represented by green certification.Based on the above results,we put forward corresponding policy suggestions:the government should reduce the scope of industries entitled to subsidies,establish a diversified certification body regulation mechanism,promote the merger and reorganization of certification industry and technological innovation,and avoid the“bad news”mode of environmental information disclosure.