The impact of environmental regulation on corporate financial performance: an empirical study from China

By using dynamic game analysis, a theoretical framework is constructed to investigate the impact of environmental regulations on corporate financial performance. A sample of 3021 A-share listed companies, listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2018, is used for empirical testing with GMM model. Through the matching of regional data and enterprise data, this paper expands the measurement of environmental regulation from meso to micro and then, systematically estimates the impact and mediating effect of environmental regulation on corporate financial performance. The results show that environmental regulation policies and instruments are important factors influencing corporate financial performance and that the main way to improve the efficiency of environmental regulation is to encourage firms to carry out pollution control through technological innovation. The empirical results not only show that environmental regulations can facilitate the upgrading of corporate financial performance, but also that technological innovation, especially green technology innovation, also partially mediates the effect of environmental regulations in promoting corporate financial performance. At the same time, the impact of environmental regulations on corporate financial performance is both constrained and influenced by corporate ownership, industry classification and city level. Environmental regulations are more likely to improve the corporate financial performance of non-state-owned companies than that of state-owned companies. Environmental regulation significantly boosts corporate financial performance in clean industries, but significantly depresses corporate financial performance in polluting industries. Compared with higher-level cities, environmental regulations only facilitate improvements to corporate financial performance in ordinary prefecture-level cities.