Can Civilized City Construction Promote Enterprise Green Innovation?

Abstract

The existing research shows that when facing the trade-off between economic benefits and green innovation, enterprises often prioritize economic gains, and how to promote enterprise green innovation (EGI) has become a pressing issue that needs to be solved at this stage. Against this backdrop, China’s Civilized City Construction (CCC) policy, which emphasizes the coordinated development of economic, political, ecological, and spiritual civilization, places higher demands on enterprise environmental behaviors. This creates an opportune moment to investigate the relationship between urban governance policies and EGI. In this study, we employ a Difference-in-Differences (DID) model to examine whether the CCC policy can promote EGI and reveal its underlying mechanisms. The research findings indicate that CCC significantly promotes EGI. The policy improves EGI levels by strengthening regional environmental regulations and increasing environmental subsidy levels. This finding provides lessons for advancing enterprise sustainability strategies and new perspectives for global urban governance policy formulation and implementation.