"From Point to Area"Effect of Government Environmental Governance:A Non-Binding Perspective on Voluntary Environmental Regulation
Chinese modernization emphasizes harmonious coexistence between humans and nature,with environmental regulation as a critical tool for government environmental governance.Since environmental regulations impose binding constraints on regulated enterprises,existing research has largely overlooked the non-binding effects of environmental regulations on unregulated enterprises.This paper examines the non-binding effects of voluntary environmental regulations,contributing to the understanding of how to stimulate endogenous motivation for green transformation and comprehensively advance green development in the economy and society.This paper takes China's voluntary environmental regulation,the"green factory"certification,as its research subject.Based on manually collected information from 2783 green factory enterprises,this paper investigates the non-binding effects of the"green factory"certification on uncertifiied(unregulated)enterprises.This paper finds that the emergence of green factory enterprises significantly increases environmental investment among uncertified local peers,demonstrating a"from point to area"effect.This influence leads to structural changes in environmental investment across industries with varying pollution levels.Mechanism analysis reveals that the"green factory"certification enhances environmental investment in unregulated enterprises through three forces:the pull from expected certification benefits,the push from intensified competitive pressure,and the auxiliary force from knowledge spillovers.Further research shows that the binding environmental governance mechanism for certified(regulated)enterprises is ineffective,while the non-binding influence exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern as the number of regulated enterprises increases.Finally,the above-mentioned non-binding mechanism and the binding mechanism of mandatory environmental regulation form a complementary organic whole.This paper makes the following contributions.First,it enriches the study of the economic consequences of environmental regulation(especially voluntary environmental regulation)from the perspective of unregulated enterprises.Second,it analyzes the causes of the non-binding effects of voluntary environmental regulation in the dimensions of pull,push,and auxiliary forces,and examines the interaction between these non-binding mechanisms and the binding mechanisms of mandatory environmental regulation,deepening the understanding of the relationship between heterogeneous environmental regulations.Finally,this paper provides policy enlightenment for using voluntary environmental regulation to stimulate the endogenous motivation of green transformation of enterprises and promote the green transformation of industries and regions from point to area.
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