Summary:
Although China has made remarkable ecological progress in recent years, it still has a long way to go to reach the goal of a carbon peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. Given the complexity of the domestic and international economic and social environments, there is an urgent need to resolve the conflict between environmental governance and economic growth. One feasible way to achieve this is to use environmental regulation to promote enterprise green innovation by giving play to the “innovation compensation effect.” As an important component of environmental regulation, green finance policies provide an important means of stimulating the innovation compensation effect. In 2012, the former China Banking Regulatory Commission issued its “Green Credit Guidelines.” By guiding the allocation of credit, this green credit policy is expected to stimulate green innovation among energy-saving and environmental protection enterprises (EEE) and force heavily polluting enterprises (HPE) to engage in more green innovation. However, these effects depend on how banks and enterprises respond to the policy. Thus, this raises the question of whether the green credit policy promotes green innovation and whether the policy effect differs between the two types of enterprises. Unlike other environmental regulation policies, which only target HPE, the green credit policy also targets EEE. With respect to bank credit decision-making, providing credit support to EEE does not involve environmental risks and can also optimize the bank's credit structure. However, providing credit to HPE does bring environmental risks, which could result in financial and reputational losses for the banks. With respect to the green behavior of enterprises, while the regulatory pressure brought by the green credit policy increases the demand for green innovation among HPE, the credit constraints brought by the policy restrict their capital demand for green innovation. As a result, HPE may choose to engage in low-cost terminal governance and strategic innovation to cope with policy regulation, which will be detrimental to their green innovation. In contrast, the green credit policy aims to promote the development of EEE through credit incentives. As the main business of EEE is to provide green products, green innovation is one of their core competitive drivers. Thus, with the aid of external financial support and the endogenous power of green innovation, EEE are likely to enhance their competitiveness by engaging in increased green innovation. Taking the Green Credit Guidelines as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method to test the different effects of the green credit policy on green innovation by HPE and EEE and their micro mechanisms. We find that the green credit policy has different effects on green innovation by HPE and EEE. Specifically, while the green credit policy can effectively promote green innovation among EEE, it does not provide sufficient support to foster green innovation among HPE. In regard to bank credit decision-making, we find that the different policy effects are partly due to their different effects on credit financing. Specifically, the policy reduces HPE’s credit scale and increases their credit cost, but increases EEE’s credit scale. In regard to enterprise green behavior, we find that the different policy effects are partly due to the different effects on corporate green behavior, such that HPE adopt low-cost strategies while EEE adopt competitive advantage strategies. In addition, the effects of the green credit policy are influenced by the ownership, cash holdings, and size of the enterprises. Bank competition and government subsidies also enhance the effect of the green credit policy in promoting green innovation in HPE. This paper makes a number of contributions to the literature. First, this paper tests the different effects of the green credit policy on green innovation by EEE and HPE. By identifying the different effects of the policy on the two types of enterprises, our paper provides a more comprehensive evaluation of its effects. Second, we identify the mechanism connecting the macro policy to subject behavior at the micro level based on the transmission chain of the green credit policy. Specifically, based on the credit policy → bank credit decision → green behavior of enterprises → green innovation trajectory, we analyze the micro mechanism of the different effects in relation to bank credit decision-making and enterprise green behavior. These findings shed light on why the green credit policy cannot effectively improve green innovation by HPE. Third, we examine the market-and government-related factors that influence the effect of the green credit policy, and find that a more competitive banking structure and more government subsidies enhance the effect of the green credit policy in promoting green innovation in HPE. This finding provides insight into how the green credit policy can be adjusted to play a more comprehensive role in enhancing green innovation.
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