ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OF ENTERPRISES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION

Abstract

The 11th Five-Year Plan of China has established obligatory targets for main pollutant emissions while the completion of the targets has been associated with the achievements of local officials. With the full implementation of this plan, many enterprises began to take forward-looking environmental protection strategies to cope with the increasingly stringent environmental regulations. Most of the existing literature have systematically studied the impact of environmental regulation from the perspective of industry or region, but they have not considered the dynamic response of enterprises to environmental regulation. The research on the economic consequences of enterprises adopting forward-looking environmental protection strategies for environmental protection investment at the micro level is relatively insufficient. This paper uses the data of China's listed manufacturing companies from 2011 to 2017 to study the effect of environmental protection investment on their business performance of enterprises. The results show that environmental protection investment has a positive cumulative effect on company’s business performance, especially in non-state-owned enterprises. Based on this conclusion, this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions to promote enterprises to implement forward-looking environmental protection strategy and gain competitive advantage.