Research on the impacts of dual environmental regulation on regional carbon emissions under the goal of carbon neutrality-the intermediary role of green technology innovation

Abstract

As an important means to promote regional low-carbon development, environmental regulation has great theoretical and practical significance for achieving the goal of carbon-neutral development in China. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2005 to 2019, this paper first uses the intermediary effect model to analyze the impact of the implementation of environmental regulation policies on regional carbon emissions, discusses the relationship between environmental regulation, green technology innovation and carbon emissions, and further uses the threshold effect model to discuss the nonlinear relationship between environmental regulation and regional carbon emissions. The results show that: the improvement of formal and informal environmental regulation can play a role in “forced emission reduction”; Green technology innovation plays a complete intermediary role in the impact of environmental regulation on regional carbon emissions; At the same time, the impact of formal and informal environmental regulation on regional carbon emissions has a threshold effect. Among them, formal environmental regulation has a double threshold effect, the threshold values are 0.429 and 0.502 respectively, while informal environmental regulation has a single threshold effect, the threshold value is 1.803. The results of heterogeneity analysis show that there are obvious differences in the implementation effects of environmental regulation policies under different economic development levels and industrialization development stages. Therefore, we should pay attention to the mutual promotion effect of different types of environmental regulation, strengthen the collaborative emission reduction of environmental regulation and green technology innovation, and improve the level of regional green technology innovation, so as to better promote the realization of regional carbon neutrality goals.