IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i9p4902-d797217.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Environmental Uncertainty on Corporate Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Mingjun Deng

    (Big Data and Intelligent Decision Research Center, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Xusheng Fang

    (School of Business, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Ziyan Tian

    (School of Business, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China)

  • Wenbing Luo

    (School of Business, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
    School of Accounting, Hunan University of Technology and Business, Changsha 410205, China)

Abstract

Corporate innovation is an important topic in the academic community, but there are few studies on the impact of the micro operation environment on corporate innovation. Using the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2009 to 2020, this paper examines the impact of environmental uncertainty on enterprise innovation from a micro perspective. The results show that there is an overall negative correlation between environmental uncertainty and corporate innovation. Companies facing a higher degree of environmental uncertainty are more cautious in their innovation investment. We also find that this negative correlation was more pronounced in companies with weaker risk-taking ability. Further research finds that financing constraints have a partial intermediary effect on the impact of environmental uncertainty on innovation, that is, environmental uncertainty can have a negative impact on innovation by increasing the financing constraints faced by corporations. Our research provides micro-level evidence for the impact of uncertainty on corporate innovation.

Suggested Citation

  • Mingjun Deng & Xusheng Fang & Ziyan Tian & Wenbing Luo, 2022. "The Impact of Environmental Uncertainty on Corporate Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-19, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:9:p:4902-:d:797217
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/4902/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/9/4902/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huang, Yun & Luk, Paul, 2020. "Measuring economic policy uncertainty in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    2. Allen, Franklin & Qian, Jun & Qian, Meijun, 2005. "Law, finance, and economic growth in China," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 57-116, July.
    3. Wang, Yizhong & Chen, Carl R. & Huang, Ying Sophie, 2014. "Economic policy uncertainty and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 227-243.
    4. Cui, Xin & Wang, Chunfeng & Liao, Jing & Fang, Zhenming & Cheng, Feiyang, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty exposure and corporate innovation investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    5. Phan, Hieu V. & Nguyen, Nam H. & Nguyen, Hien T. & Hegde, Shantaram, 2019. "Policy uncertainty and firm cash holdings," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 71-82.
    6. Hou, Xiaohui & Wang, Tengyu & Ma, Caoyuan, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and corporate fraud," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 97-110.
    7. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    8. Donald D. Bergh & Michael W. Lawless, 1998. "Portfolio Restructuring and Limits to Hierarchical Governance: The Effects of Environmental Uncertainty and Diversification Strategy," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 9(1), pages 87-102, February.
    9. Brandon Julio & Youngsuk Yook, 2012. "Political Uncertainty and Corporate Investment Cycles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 45-84, February.
    10. Nick Bloom & Stephen Bond & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Uncertainty and Investment Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 391-415.
    11. Talavera, Oleksandr & Tsapin, Andriy & Zholud, Oleksandr, 2012. "Macroeconomic uncertainty and bank lending: The case of Ukraine," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 279-293.
    12. Ghosh, Dipankar & Olsen, Lori, 2009. "Environmental uncertainty and managers' use of discretionary accruals," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 188-205, February.
    13. Chang, Chun & Chen, Xin & Liao, Guanmin, 2014. "What are the reliably important determinants of capital structure in china?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 87-113.
    14. Cao, Yang & Chen, Yinghui & Zhang, Yuhe, 2022. "Political uncertainty, innovation-driven strategy, and corporate R&D," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    15. Li, Kaifeng & Xia, Bobo & Chen, Yun & Ding, Ning & Wang, Jie, 2021. "Environmental uncertainty, financing constraints and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    16. Bronwyn Hall, 2004. "The financing of research and development," Chapters, in: Anthony Bartzokas & Sunil Mani (ed.), Financial Systems, Corporate Investment in Innovation, and Venture Capital, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Hyunseob Kim & Howard Kung, 2017. "The Asset Redeployability Channel: How Uncertainty Affects Corporate Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(1), pages 245-280.
    18. Jae Sim & Egon Zakrajsek & Simon Gilchrist, 2010. "Uncertainty, Financial Frictions, and Investment Dynamics," 2010 Meeting Papers 1285, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Pertuze, Julio A. & Reyes, Tomas & Vassolo, Roberto S. & Olivares, Nicolas, 2019. "Political uncertainty and innovation: The relative effects of national leaders’ education levels and regime systems on firm-level patent applications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    20. Paul M. Romer, 1994. "The Origins of Endogenous Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 3-22, Winter.
    21. Wensheng Kang & Jing Wang, 2021. "Corporate tax effects of economic policy uncertainty," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(S1), pages 2577-2600, April.
    22. Shen, Huayu & Hou, Fei, 2021. "Trade policy uncertainty and corporate innovation evidence from Chinese listed firms in new energy vehicle industry," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    23. Tan, Justin, 2001. "Innovation and risk-taking in a transitional economy: A comparative study of chinese managers and entrepreneurs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 359-376, July.
    24. Guan, Jialin & Xu, Huijuan & Huo, Da & Hua, Yechun & Wang, Yunfeng, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and corporate innovation: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    25. Arthur Lewbel, 1997. "Constructing Instruments for Regressions with Measurement Error when no Additional Data are Available, with an Application to Patents and R&D," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1201-1214, September.
    26. Govindarajan, V., 1984. "Appropriateness of accounting data in performance evaluation: An empirical examination of environmental uncertainty as an intervening variable," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 125-135, June.
    27. Michael R. Walls & James S. Dyer, 1996. "Risk Propensity and Firm Performance: A Study of the Petroleum Exploration Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(7), pages 1004-1021, July.
    28. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Wang, Chih-Wei & Ho, Shan-Ju, 2020. "Financial innovation and bank growth: The role of institutional environments," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    29. Gordon, Roger H. & Li, Wei, 2003. "Government as a discriminating monopolist in the financial market: the case of China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 283-312, February.
    30. Chen, Xikai & Le, Cao Hoang Anh & Shan, Yaowen & Taylor, Stephen, 2020. "Australian policy uncertainty and corporate investment," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    31. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 169-215.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Yige & Dong, Nanyan & Tian, Gaoliang & Zhang, Junrui, 2023. "Wisdom of the masses: Employee education and corporate risk taking," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Alexandra Zamfirache & Titus Suciu & Carmen Elena Anton & Ruxandra-Gabriela Albu & Ioana-Simona Ivasciuc, 2023. "The Interest Shown by Potential Young Entrepreneurs in Romania Regarding Feasible Funding Sources, in the Context of a Sustainable Entrepreneurial Education," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-29, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Kaifeng & Xia, Bobo & Chen, Yun & Ding, Ning & Wang, Jie, 2021. "Environmental uncertainty, financing constraints and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    2. Yao, Shouyu & Pan, Yuying & Sensoy, Ahmet & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Cheng, Feiyang, 2021. "Green credit policy and firm performance: What we learn from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    3. Shen, Xieyang & Yang, Sijie & Chen, Yulin & Zeng, Jianyu, 2022. "How does economic policy uncertainty influence managers' learning from peers' stock prices? Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. Liu, Tingli & Chen, Xiao & Yang, Songling, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and enterprise investment decision: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Guan, Jialin & Xu, Huijuan & Huo, Da & Hua, Yechun & Wang, Yunfeng, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and corporate innovation: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    6. Shabir, Mohsin & Jiang, Ping & Bakhsh, Satar & Zhao, Zhongxiu, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and bank stability: Threshold effect of institutional quality and competition," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    7. Wen, Huwei & Lee, Chien-Chiang & Zhou, Fengxiu, 2022. "How does fiscal policy uncertainty affect corporate innovation investment? Evidence from China's new energy industry," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    8. Klayme, Tania & Gokmenoglu, Korhan K. & Rustamov, Bezhan, 2023. "Economic policy uncertainty, COVID-19 and corporate investment: Evidence from the gold mining industry," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).
    9. Wan, Qunchao & Chen, Jin & Yao, Zhu & Yuan, Ling, 2022. "Preferential tax policy and R&D personnel flow for technological innovation efficiency of China's high-tech industry in an emerging economy," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    10. Vo, Hong & Trinh, Quoc-Dat & Le, Minh & Nguyen, Thuy-Ngan, 2021. "Does economic policy uncertainty affect investment sensitivity to peer stock prices?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 685-699.
    11. Huang, Jialin & Luo, Yu & Peng, Yuchao, 2021. "Corporate financial asset holdings under economic policy uncertainty: Precautionary saving or speculating?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1359-1378.
    12. Wang, Yonglian & Wang, Lijun & Pan, Changchun & Hong, Songzhi, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and price pass-through effect of exchange rate in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    13. Suyi Zheng & Jiandong Wen, 2023. "How Does Firm-Level Economic Policy Uncertainty Affect Corporate Innovation? Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-23, April.
    14. Huizheng Liu & Jingyi Zhang & Qi Han & Wenshen Pan & Muhammad Afaq Haider Jafri, 2022. "Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on the Stability of Enterprises Embedded in a Global Value Chain," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 12(2), pages 1-3.
    15. Chen, Yanyan, 2022. "Does political turnover affect corporate investment? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    16. Liu, Guanchun & Zhang, Chengsi, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and firms' investment and financing decisions in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    17. Tran, Quoc Trung, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty and cost of debt financing: International evidence," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    18. Al-Thaqeb, Saud Asaad & Algharabali, Barrak Ghanim, 2019. "Economic policy uncertainty: A literature review," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 20(C).
    19. Lou, Zhukun & Chen, Siyu & Yin, Wenwei & Zhang, Chuan & Yu, Xiaoyu, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and firm innovation: Evidence from a risk-taking perspective," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 78-96.
    20. Nguyen, Quang & Kim, Huong Trang, 2023. "An exploration on policy uncertainty as a driver of R&D activity," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:9:p:4902-:d:797217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.