Over the past forty years, China’s manufacturing industry has achieved remarkable progress, with the competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises continuously improving. However, the expansion of manufacturing enterprises and the improvement of competitiveness have been built upon massive resource consumption and serious environmental pollution. At present, China’s ecological environment carrying capacity has basically reached its limit. Therefore, resolving the conflict between environmental protection and the improvement of manufacturing enterprise competitiveness has become urgent. Through this study, we provide a theoretical basis for further research on achieving a win-win situation between environmental protection and the improvement of manufacturing enterprise competitiveness.
This paper conducts a theoretical analysis of the internal logic among incentive environmental regulation, local government competition, and the competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises. Based on panel data of listed companies in 27 sub-sectors of China’s manufacturing industry from 2001 to 2021, empirical tests are performed using multiple linear regression analysis and threshold regression analysis. The results show that the impact of incentive environmental regulation on the competitiveness of China’s manufacturing enterprises exhibits a U-shaped curve characteristic; that is, the competitiveness level of manufacturing enterprises tends to decrease first and then increase with the implementation of incentive environmental regulation. There is obvious heterogeneity in the impact of incentive environmental regulation on the competitiveness of different types of manufacturing enterprises. Analyzing the impact of incentive environmental regulation on the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of local government competition, this paper finds that local government competition currently plays a negative role in the process of incentive environmental regulation affecting manufacturing enterprise competitiveness. Exploring the role of local government competition in this process from a dynamic perspective, this paper finds that when the level of economic development is relatively low, local government competition plays a negative role in this process, while when the level of economic development is relatively high, local government competition plays a positive role. To achieve a win-win situation for environmental protection and the improvement of manufacturing enterprise competitiveness, it is necessary to accelerate the research and practice of various incentive environmental regulation tools, adopt differentiated incentive environmental regulation policies for different types of manufacturing enterprises, and the setting of local government performance evaluation indicator system should focus on “economic efficiency+ environmental efficiency.”
Compared with previous literature, this paper makes contributions in the following two aspects: First, this paper incorporates local government competition into the mechanism analysis of incentive environmental regulation, expands the research dimensions of incentive environmental regulation, and discovers new conclusions. By cross-integrating theories related to environmental regulation and industrial economics, this paper analyzes the internal logic and trends of the impact of incentive environmental regulation on the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing enterprises and discusses whether there is heterogeneity in this impact. Second, this paper uses multiple linear regression analysis, threshold regression analysis, and other methods to empirically test the impact of incentive environmental regulation on the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing enterprises from multiple angles.
This paper contributes to the cross-application of environmental regulation and industrial economics, can lay the foundation for further research on the win-win problem of environmental protection and the improvement of Chinese manufacturing enterprise competitiveness, and provides theoretical support for relevant government departments to formulate win-win policies for environmental protection and the improvement of manufacturing enterprises competitiveness.
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