The effects of environmental regulation and technological innovation on green growth: A theoretical analysis

¹ Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
² Faculty of Management and Economics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

^a Corresponding author: wangll@dlut.edu.cn

Abstract

As green growth has attracted a great deal of attention due to the growing concern about the degradation of natural resources and environmental pollution in China, the questions of how to achieve it and which factors drive green growth have become hot topics. Environmental regulation and technological innovation are two main fulcrums in the realization of green growth. However, there is lacking a deeper understanding of the impact of environmental regulation and technological innovation on green growth in a methodological framework. Accordingly, this paper attempts to analyze how these factors affect the implementation of green growth in a model. The findings reveal that (1) in the short term, environmental regulation has inhibited green growth, but has a positive impact on green growth in the long run, (2) technological innovation plays a positive role in green growth improvement, and (3) the causality chain among regulation, technological innovation, and green growth is a typical mediation model. Technological innovation plays an important mediation role in the causal chain. This study not only enriches and deepens theories on green growth, but also successfully implements green growth practices and improve their performance.