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Environmental protection tax and corporate carbon emissions in China: a perspective of green innovation

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Abstract

The environmental protection tax (EPT) reform is a major strategic measure to further implement green development and is the most important environmental economic policy in China. Using data from 3339 companies listed on the A-shares in China's Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2006 to 2021, this paper evaluates the policy impact of the EPT on corporate carbon emissions and its internal mechanism from the perspective of green innovation by the DID method. The results show that EPT reform effectively promotes corporate carbon emission reduction, and the conclusion remains valid after robustness tests such as the DDD and DML method. The EPT reform mainly promotes carbon emission reduction in companies with high executive compensation levels and high environmental information disclosure, and mature companies. Furthermore, the EPT reform promotes enterprises to reduce carbon emissions by forcing them to adopt strategic and endpoint green innovation, and this "forcing" effect is mainly reflected in internal incentives and external pressure.

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Fig. 1

Source: https://www.carbonmonitor.org.cn

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Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Notes

  1. Including Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hunan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Hainan, Guangxi, Shanxi, and Beijing.

  2. Including thermal power, iron and steel, cement, electrolytic aluminum, coal, metallurgy, chemical industry, petrochemical, building materials, papermaking, brewing, pharmaceutical, fermentation, textile, tanning, and mining.

  3. Including environmental liability disclosure, environmental performance and governance disclosure; if the quantitative and qualitative combination of disclosure = 2, qualitative disclosure = 1, no disclosure = 0.

  4. Including environmental management disclosure, environmental certification disclosure and environmental information disclosure; if disclosure = 2, no disclosure = 0.

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Funding

This study is funded by Key Project of Jiangsu Province Social Science Applied Research Excellence Program (Grant No. 23SYA-001); Key Research Project of Jiangsu Province in the "14th Five-Year Plan" for Education Science (Grant No. B/2022/01/102); University Philosophy, Social Science Research Fund project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. 2019SJA0857).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Digital Economics and Management, Wuxi University, Wuxi, China

    Rongrong Wei & Yueming Xia

  2. School of Economics and Management, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China

    Mengling Wang

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  1. Rongrong Wei
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  2. Mengling Wang
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Contributions

Rongrong Wei was involved in conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, and writing—original draft, review, and editing. Meiling Wang was responsible for conceptualization, supervision, and validation. Yueming Xia carried out data curation, visualization, and reviewing.

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Correspondence to Yueming Xia.

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Wei, R., Wang, M. & Xia, Y. Environmental protection tax and corporate carbon emissions in China: a perspective of green innovation. Clean Techn Environ Policy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-024-02754-w

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