Management Review ›› 2021, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (6): 111-121.

• Technology and Innovation Management • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Green Technology Progress, Positive Externality and Environmental Pollution Control of China

Xie Ronghui1,2   

  1. 1. School of Economics & Management, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing 210094;
    2. Jiangsu Industrial Cluster Research Base, Nanjing 210094
  • Received:2018-04-03 Published:2021-07-03

Abstract: The direction of technology progress will impact the environment deeply. Transferring from dirty innovation to green innovation marks the fundamental transformation of an economy’s development from a "gray" model to a "green" one. By distinguishing between the dirty technology and green technology, this paper introduces the green technology into a pollution emission equation and establishes a theoretical model to examine how the green technology and its "double externality" affect pollution emissions. Then we adopt the fix-effect model and the differential GMM method to make an empirical test to the theoretical hypotheses, by employing panel data of 35 sectors of China’s industry during 2002-2014. The results show that, (1) not all the technology progress will reduce pollution emissions. China’s current technology innovation mainly refers to dirty technologies which lead to a significant increase in emissions. (2) Green technology progress is crucial means to reduce pollution. The greener the technology is, the greater the pollution abatement effect will be. (3) For the aggregate sample, environmental regulation has played a moderating role and has effectively corrected the "market failure" caused by the positive externality of green technology, further enhanced the environmental improvement effect of green technology progress. But for the subsample of pollution-intensive sectors, the moderating effect of environmental regulation is not significant. Finally, this paper presents corresponding policy suggestions.

Key words: green technology progress, positive externality, environmental regulation, moderating effect, environmental pollution control