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| Can Green Credit Policy Promote Enterprise Green Innovation? A Study of China’s 730 GEM Listed Companies |
| Chen Lifeng1,2, Zheng Jianzhuang1 |
1.School of Business, Hangzhou City University, Hangzhou 310015, China
2.School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China |
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Abstract As China’s manufacturing industry and economic volume reached the first and second place respectively in 2010, stable development of economy has become a major strategy of China, where maintaining the sustainable development of enterprises is becoming particularly crucial. In this context, a rapidly increasing number of listed companies in China have started to issue sustainability reports and environment, social and governance (ESG) ratings since last decade. This fact implies that green economy and sustainable development are not only valued by advanced countries but also by developing economies. China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) proposed the “green credit guidelines” (GCG) in 2012, and issued the “notice on submitting green credit statistic” in 2013. The implement of the “key evaluation indicators for green credit” by CBRC in 2014 represents a further progression of regulatory system as well as a formal application of green credit policy, with the main purpose of promoting green transformation by adjusting the credit structure. However, can green credit policy really promote the green transformation of companies, or facilitate the incremental investment towards green innovation and sustainable development? This paper employs 4,516 annual observations of China’s Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) listed companies from 2010 to 2019 as research samples, combing the regression models of difference in difference (DID) and fixed effect (FE) to examine the impact mechanism of GCG on green innovation and ESG performance. We aim at investigating whether GCG can induce green innovation behavior, as well as exploring the internal mechanism between green innovation and ESG scores. Our research findings are as follows: (1) In fact, GCG has inhibited the green innovation of China’s GEM listed companies; (2) Green innovation of GEM listed companies has an internal mechanism for improving ESG performance; (3) Both political connection strength (PCS) and regional innovation capability (RIC) of GEM listed companies can moderate the positive effect of green innovation on ESG performance. Particularly, the connectedness shows the dynamic patterns by two stage general moment method (GMM) regression with instrumental variables, highlighting the risk of PCS and RIC are the shock transmitters from green innovation to sustainable development (ESG) of GEM listed companies.The general direction of green credit policy is advocating environmental protection, green transformation, as well as sustainable development for enterprises. However, GCG have a negative impact on the green innovation and sustainable development performance of China’s GEM listed companies, which provides new practical inspiration and reflections for deepening the green transformation strategy of China’s manufacturing industry. As for those emerging markets and products, it is a wiser transition to the new business mode, especially considering new investment trends such as green and sustainable performance considerations. Stakeholders of GEM listed companies will confront with the dual pressures from social and environmental regulations, thus they should give priority to adopting long-term and green-development strategies, attaching more importance to the social value of listed companies. Meanwhile, the government also needs to promote entrepreneurial companies to abandon traditional business strategy and adopt new development strategies to balance the economic, social and environmental benefits. Therefore, China’s GEM listed companies have to make new strategic decisions, not only to pursue the new products that can meet the marketing requirements but also to accommodate new investment trends and financial policies. Furthermore, investors have also begun to measure the financial value of ESG indicators in their lending strategies, while expecting financial institutions to surpass their main function of maximizing profits from emerging industries. In general, both banks and professional investment institutions should fully adopt the sustainable investment strategies and firmly believe that improving society and environment is more important than pursuing short-term profits. That is, investors should focus more on the sustainable financial performance.The main contributions of this research can be summarized from the following aspects (1) In terms of theoretical thinking, although existing studies found that the financing structure can affect the innovation activities of enterprises, the internal mechanism is still not yet clear, especially for the impact mechanism on sustainable development performance, our paper provides broader space and practical reference for future researches in related fields. This paper further explores the mechanism of GCG affecting ESG performance of innovation-driven startups in view of green innovation, which enriches and expands the sustainable development theory. (2) In terms of research methodology, we manually acquired the patent data, employing the number of green patents authorized to measure the quantity of green innovation and employing the number of forward citations of green patents to measure the quality of green innovation, with an attempt at filling up the gaps on previous quantitative researches of innovation. (3) In terms of policy practice, this paper analyzes the mechanism of green credit policy on sustainable development indicators from the perspective of green innovation, providing a new practical enlightenment and decision-making support. Our study also contributes to a better understanding of the ESG practices for GEM listed companies and startups in emerging countries based on the green credit scenario.
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Received: 08 May 2022
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2023, Vol. 53 
