Does Environmental Regulation Affect Export Quality? Theory and Evidence from China
1
School of Economics, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
2
Institute of Central China Development, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
3
Institute of Regional and Urban-Rural Development, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(21), 8237; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218237
Received: 1 October 2020
/
Revised: 3 November 2020
/
Accepted: 4 November 2020
/
Published: 7 November 2020
Most studies focus on the empirical investigation of the relationship between environment and trade, but they lack a systematic theoretical framework. To fill this gap, this study constructs an analytical framework of export competitiveness from the perspective of product quality, and reveals the theoretical mechanism of environmental regulation affecting export quality. We empirically examine the impact of environmental regulation on the export quality of China’s manufacturing industry, as well as its possible mechanism. Our findings show that environmental regulation can significantly promote the export quality upgrading of the manufacturing industry and that process and product productivity are two possible channels through which such regulation affects export quality, although their mediating effects are in opposite directions. The mediating effect of product productivity is greater than that of process productivity, indicating that environmental regulation mainly has an innovation offset effect on China’s manufacturing industry. For pollution-intensive industries, environmental regulation plays a significant promoting role through the channel of product productivity, but, for clean industries, environmental regulation has an inhibitory effect through the channel of process productivity. These findings provide important enlightenment for the coordinated development of China’s ecological civilization and trade power.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
environmental regulation; export quality; quality upgrading; process productivity; product productivity
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Xie, J.; Sun, Q.; Wang, S.; Li, X.; Fan, F. Does Environmental Regulation Affect Export Quality? Theory and Evidence from China. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8237. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218237
AMA Style
Xie J, Sun Q, Wang S, Li X, Fan F. Does Environmental Regulation Affect Export Quality? Theory and Evidence from China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2020; 17(21):8237. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218237
Chicago/Turabian StyleXie, Jing, Qi Sun, Shaohong Wang, Xiaoping Li, and Fei Fan. 2020. "Does Environmental Regulation Affect Export Quality? Theory and Evidence from China" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 21: 8237. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218237
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
