Environmental taxes and innovation in chinese textile enterprises: Influence of mediating effects and heterogeneous factors

Abstract

Climate change and environmental conditions call for more attention to be paid to eco-friendly economic behavior. As a market-oriented environmental regulation, environmental tax can stimulate and guide enterprises’ environmental innovation in a neutral way. However, what elements connect the environmental tax and enterprise innovation activity together? Are all the enterprises’ innovation activities affected by the environmental tax in the same way? To answer the questions, the study uses the data of Chinese textile listed companies between 2004 and 2018 to explore the intermediary role of manpower and capital investment in the innovation chain and further analyze the influence of the heterogeneous factors such as property right, segmented industry, and region. The results show that the environmental tax can effectively promote the innovation capital input of Chinese textile enterprises, and the innovation manpower input plays a partial mediation role. At the same time, environmental tax can effectively promote the innovation performance output of Chinese textile enterprises, and innovation capital input plays a complete mediation role. In addition, heterogeneous factors such as property right, segmented industry and region will affect the relation of environmental tax to innovation input and output quality and greenness to varying degrees. The study makes a profound analysis of the relation of environmental tax on Chinese textile enterprises innovation by using the microdata at the enterprise level, providing a more targeted reference for making policies in the future.