Environmental Judicial Specialization and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from the Establishment of Environmental Court

doi:10.15936/j.cnki.1008-3758.2024.03.007

Abstract

Abstract: Environmental regulation has an important impact on enterprises' green innovation. However， most of the existing studies are based on the perspectives of legislation and law enforcement， and less attention is paid to the effect of judicial means. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the establishment of environmental court (EC) in China's intermediate people's courts of prefecture-level cities， A-share listed firms from 2007-2020 are taken as the sample in a DID model to study the incentive effect of environmental judicial specialization on enterprises' green innovation. The results show that the establishment of EC can improve enterprises' green innovation significantly， and the results remain valid after conducting various robust tests. Moreover， by using the DDD method to explore the boundary condition of the foregoing effect of the establishment of EC， it is found that the positive impact is even greater when the enterprises are in the high-pollution industry， are state-own， and are located in areas with worse legal environment， or have lower degrees of digital transformation. Further analysis of enterprises' green innovation strategies finds that the incentive effect of the establishment of EC on green innovation is a crowding-out effect on the existing non-green innovation on one hand， and the establishment of EC can improve the quantity and the quality of enterprises' green innovation simultaneously on the other hand. Environmental judicial specialization is an effective way for green governance， which complements the lack of attention to environmental justice in the existing environmental regulation research， and provides an important reference for promoting the formation of a comprehensive environmental legal system in China， and achieving the coordinated development of “having laws to abide by” and “abiding by the laws”.

Key words: environmental judicial specialization; environmental court (EC); green innovation; environmental regulation

CLC Number:

F270
DF81

LI Yating， LI Zijie. Environmental Judicial Specialization and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from the Establishment of Environmental Court[J]. Journal of Northeastern University(Social Science), 2024, 26(3): 55-66.

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