An empirical study on government direct environmental regulation and heterogeneous innovation investment

摘要

There is currently no consensus on the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise innovation. Moreover, empirical studies on this topic have generally been based on government indirect environmental regulation data. To examine this relationship further, this study uses government direct environmental regulation (GDER) data. Here, enterprise innovation is measured by innovation investment. Additionally, innovation investment is divided into two stages, a research stage and a development stage, to explore the effect of GDER on heterogeneous innovation investment. Furthermore, this study examines the impact of executive compensation on GDER and innovation investment, specifically looking at the two stages of innovation investment. The results indicate that GDER has a negative impact on heterogeneous innovation investment and executive compensation has different moderating effects: strengthening the negative relationship between GDER and research investment, while weakening the negative relationship between GDER and development investment. This study offers new insights into the relationship between environmental regulation and enterprise innovation considering the impact of executive compensation. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.