环境司法专门化对企业绿色转型的影响及其作用机制

Impact of environmental justice specialization on corporate green transformation and its mechanisms

加强生态环境法治建设是推动经济社会全面绿色发展的长效机制,环保法庭(生态环境保护法庭和环境资源审判庭的简称)作为环境司法专门化的一项制度创新,旨在提高环境司法效率和环境治理质量,但鲜有研究关注环境司法改革对企业绿色转型的影响。鉴于此,该研究借助地方中级人民法院设立环保法庭作为准自然实验,以2004—2020年中国A股上市公司为样本,运用多期双重差分模型探究环境司法专门化对企业绿色转型的影响及其作用机制。结果表明:①环保法庭的设立对企业绿色转型具有显著的积极影响,体现为促进企业绿色创新水平增强和全要素生产率提高,该结论经一系列稳健性检验后依然成立。②机制分析表明,环保法庭的设立通过强化企业外部约束与提高企业内部动力双重途径促进企业绿色转型。外部约束机制包括削弱政企合谋导致的治理失灵,以及增强社会公众对企业环境治理的软约束。内部动力机制包括降低企业绿色转型面临的融资压力,以及提高企业技术改进过程中的创新效率。③异质性分析发现,环保法庭的绿色转型效应对污染行业、民营企业以及有环保背景CEO的企业影响更为突出。该研究表明环境司法专门化对企业绿色转型的积极影响具有持续性,不会因为潜在的转型成本而挤出绿色创新活动,为企业绿色转型发展探索了一条激励相容的法制途径。因此,应持续深化环境司法专门化改革,加强跨流域、跨区域环境司法联动,探索司法、行政和社会组织协作模式,完善外部约束与内生动力相协调的综合治理机制,保持常态化外部压力的同时激发全社会生态环境共建共享共治的内生动力。

Strengthening the rule of law in the ecological environment is a long-term mechanism to promote comprehensive green trans-formation in economic and social development.Environmental courts,as an institutional innovation in the specialization of environmen-tal justice,aim to improve the efficiency of environmental justice and the quality of environmental governance.However,few studies have paid attention to the impact of environmental justice reform on corporate green transformation.In view of this and considering the establishment of environmental courts by China's local intermediate people's courts as a quasi-natural experiment,this paper examined the impact of environmental judicial specialization on corporate green transformation and its mechanisms using a multi-period DID mod-el based on the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2020.The results showed that:①The establishment of environ-mental courts had a significant positive impact on corporate green transformation,as evidenced by the promotion of green innovation and an increase in total factor productivity.This conclusion still held after a series of robustness tests.②The mechanism analysis showed that the establishment of the environmental court promoted corporate green transformation through strengthening external con-straints and improving the internal dynamics of enterprises.Specifically,the external constraint mechanism included weakening the gov-ernance failure caused by the collusion between the government and enterprises,as well as enhancing the soft constraints imposed by the public.The internal dynamic mechanism included reducing the financing pressure and improving the innovation efficiency faced by enterprises in the progress of green transformation.③Heterogeneity analysis found that the green transformation effect of environmen-tal courts had a more significant positive effect on polluting industries,private firms,and firms with CEOs with environmental back-grounds.This study showed that the positive impact of environmental justice specialization on corporate green transformation was sus-tainable and would not squeeze out green innovation activities because of the potential transformation costs,exploring an incentive-com-patible legal path for corporate green transformation.Therefore,it is necessary to deepen the reform of environmental justice specializa-tion,strengthen cross-basin and cross-regional environmental justice linkages,explore collaboration models among judicial,administra-tive,and social organizations,and improve the comprehensive governance mechanism that coordinates external constraints with internal dynamics,so as to stimulate the endogenous motivations of the whole society to build,share,and govern the ecological environment while maintaining normalized external pressure.