环境规制激发企业努力研发？——来自火电企业数据的实证

以波特假说为理论基础，将现有区域或行业层面的研究细化到微观企业层面，选取中国火电上市公司为研究样本，运用零膨胀模型实证分析环境规制对企业研发努力的影响。结果表明：（1）环境规制强度与中国火电企业研发投入呈显著的“U”型关系，且这一关系受到企业规模的负向调节作用。环境规制增强能够促进企业加大研发投入，但是随着企业规模扩张，环境规制增强反而会抑制企业的研发投入。（2）环境规制强度与中国火电企业专利申请数量呈显著的“倒U”型关系，且这一关系也受到企业规模的负向调节作用。环境规制强度过大会导致企业专利申请数量降低，但是随着企业规模扩张，这一问题将有所缓解，甚至会出现逆转。因此，环境规制对企业研发努力的激励作用并不能一概而论。

Can environmental regulations stimulate enterprises’ R&D efforts?-An empirical analysis based on the data of thermal power plants

The paper refines the study at the regional or industrial level to micro-enterprise level based on the Porter hypothesis and empirically analyzes the impact of environmental regulations on R&D effort of enterprises using zero-inflated models with application to Chinese thermal power listed companies. Firstly, environmental regulation intensity has a U-shaped relationship with Chinese thermal power plants’ R&D inputs. The relationship between environmental regulation intensity and R&D inputs is negatively regulated by enterprise scale. Enhancing the environmental regulation intensity can promote enterprises to increase R&D inputs. However, with the expansion of enterprise scale, the strengthening environmental regulation will reduce the R&D inputs. Secondly, environmental regulation intensity has an adverse U-shaped relationship with the number of patent applications of Chinese thermal power plants. The relationship between environmental regulation intensity and the number of patent applications is negatively regulated by enterprise scale. Therefore, if environmental regulation intensity is too high, the number of patent applications reduces. However, the problem will be eased and even reversed by the expansion of enterprise scale.