The Impact of SO2 Emissions Trading Scheme on Firm’s Environmental Performance: A Channel from Robot Application

Improving the environmental performance of enterprises is the key to achieving the goal of energy conservation, emission reduction and green development. This paper investigates the causal impact on the firm’s environmental performance of China’s SO2 emissions trading scheme (SO2 ETS), a market-base...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2022-12, Vol.19 (24), p.16471
Main Authors: Song, Jian, Wang, Yijing, Wang, Jing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
Automation
Carbon
Developing countries
Emission analysis
Emission standards
Emissions control
Emissions trading
Energy conservation
Environmental management
Environmental performance
Environmental regulations
Green development
Hypotheses
Investigations
LDCs
Pollutants
Pollution control
Productivity
Regulation
Robots
Sulfur dioxide
Sustainable development
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Summary:Improving the environmental performance of enterprises is the key to achieving the goal of energy conservation, emission reduction and green development. This paper investigates the causal impact on the firm’s environmental performance of China’s SO2 emissions trading scheme (SO2 ETS), a market-based environmental regulation. Different from the verification mechanism of the Porter hypothesis in the existing literature, we examine the micro mechanism of both emission reduction and efficiency gains of enterprises from the perspective of robot application based on Chinese firm-level data from 2000 to 2013. The paper found that SO2 ETS significantly reduces the emission intensity of Chinese enterprises, and the results are still significant after a series of robustness tests and using instrumental variables to overcome the endogeneity problem. Mechanism analysis shows that the reduction of pollutant emissions and the productivity effect of robot application are two significant channels for SO2 ETS to improve the firm’s environmental performance. In addition, in resource-based and recession-oriented cities, the SO2 ETS has a more significant effect on enterprise emission reduction. These findings provide empirical evidence and policy enlightenment for enterprises to promote market-oriented environmental regulation and release institutional dividends in the process of industrial automation transformation, green and sustainable development.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph192416471