促进还是抑制:政府研发补助对企业绿色创新绩效的影响

Promoting or Inhibiting: The Impact of Government R&D Subsidies on the Green Innovation Performance of Firms

以制度理论和委托代理理论为基础,本文基于2010—2017年中国A股重污染行业上市公司数据,探究了政府研发补助对策略性绿色创新绩效和实质性绿色创新绩效的影响,并分析了环境规制和管理者环境关注度的调节作用。研究结果表明,政府研发补助对策略性绿色创新绩效有正向影响,但政府研发补助和实质性绿色创新绩效之间呈现倒“U型”关系。进一步研究发现,环境规制和管理者环境关注度均对政府研发补助与策略性绿色创新绩效之间的关系有负向调节作用,而对政府研发补助和实质性绿色创新绩效之间的关系有正向调节作用。本文通过探究政府研发补助对两种不同类型绿色创新绩效的影响,解释了现有研究中关于政府研发补助和企业绿色创新绩效之间关系的认识存在的不一致,同时通过对企业内外部治理因素的调节效应的探究,丰富了有关政府研发补助实施效果的情境因素的研究。本文的研究发现为政府制定相关环境政策以及推动企业绿色创新提供理论基础和实践启示。

Unlike general technological innovation,green innovation has a series of characteristics such as high cost and high risk,which leads to relatively low motivation for firms to take the initiative in green innovation. Based on this,government policies have become an important factor to guide firms to carry out green innovation. Against the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and green development of China,this paper deeply explores the impact of government policies on the green innovation of firms and reveals its impact mechanism. Thus,this paper is of great significance to the implementation of environmental policies and the promotion of green transformation and development of firms at the current stage of China to ultimately achieve the dual performance of economy and environment.Although scholars have explored the relationship between government-related policies,such as government R&D subsidies,and the green innovation performance of firms,they only focused on the simple linear relationship between government R&D subsidies and the green innovation performance of firms. In addition,they did not distinguish green innovation behavior and performance of firms,thus not revealing the differential impact of government R&D subsidies on different types of green innovation performance. Moreover,the impact of government policies on the green innovation performance of firms is context-dependent, but existing research did not consider the effect of internal and external environmental governance factors when exploring the situational factors that affect the relationship between government policies and the green innovation performance of firms. Based on this,this study divides the green innovation of firms into two types:substantive green innovation and strategic green innovation. By integrating the institutional theory and the principal-agent theory,this study aims to explore the differential impact of government R&D subsidies on substantive green innovation performance and strategic green innovation performance. And this paper further identifies the key boundary conditions that affect the relationship between government R&D subsidies and the green innovation performance of firms from the perspectives of internal and external governance factors.This study explored the effect of government R&D subsidies on the strategic green innovation performance and substantive green innovation performance respectively,and examined the moderating effect of environmental regulation and managers’ environmental concerns by using 2010—2017 data of China’s A-share listed companies of heavy pollution industries and the method of the negative binomial regression model. The results shows that government R&D subsidies have a positive impact on strategic green innovation performance,while the impact of government R&D subsidies on substantive green innovation performance presents an inverted U-shaped relationship. Furthermore,this study also finds that both environmental regulation and managers’ environmental concerns have negative moderating effects on the relationship between government R&D subsidies and strategic green innovation performance,while have positive moderating effects on the relationship between government R&D subsidies and substantive green innovation performance.By exploring the impact of government R&D subsidies on two different types of green innovation performance,this study explains the contradictions existing in previous studies on the relationship between government R&D subsidies and the green innovation performance of firms. At the same time,by exploring the moderating effect of internal and external governance factors,this study enriches the research on situational factors related to the implementation effect of government R&D subsidies.Moreover,the research findings of this research provide solid theoretical foundation and practical guidance for the government to formulate environmental policies.