The Levels of Government Environmental Attention and Enterprises’ Green Technological Innovation

Abstract

This study utilizes data from listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2023 and employs text analysis methods to investigate the impact of government environmental concerns on corporate green technology innovation and its underlying impact mechanisms. The empirical findings demonstrate that heightened government environmental concerns significantly foster corporate green technology innovation. This relationship remains robust across a series of sensitivity analyses. The impact mechanism analysis reveals that increased government environmental concern leads to a heightened intensity of environmental regulation, drives the intelligent transformation of enterprises, and enhances the implementation of corporate environmental strategies, collectively contributing to the improvement of corporate green technology innovation capabilities. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effect of government environmental concerns is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, mature enterprises, and industries with lower pollution levels. This study underscores that the government’s intensified focus on environmental issues can effectively promote corporate green technology innovation, thereby promoting sustainable economic and social development and supporting the dual goals of environmental protection and economic growth.

1. Introduction

In recent years, social issues related to sustainable development, such as climate change and public health crises, have increasingly emerged as existential threats to humanity, garnering widespread attention from societies around the globe. In response, vigorously promoting green development and advancing green transformation in economic activities have become pivotal development objectives for China. Green technology innovation is a crucial driver of environmental governance, facilitating the green transformation of the entire production chain within enterprises. This transformation is vital for establishing a more sustainable environmental governance system. Guided by the principles of green development, China has systematically implemented initiatives in areas such as green policy incentives and green low-carbon technology innovation, achieving significant progress [1]. In order to attain the dual goals of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality”, enterprises must actively align with the national strategy for green development and ecological civilization by enhancing green technology innovation, energy conservation, emission reduction, and green procurement. These efforts are essential to advancing the national green transformation agenda.

Current research on enterprise green technology innovation within the academic community primarily focuses on three key perspectives. First, from the perspective of environmental economics, scholars examine the impact of environmental regulation tools on green innovation in enterprises, exploring whether these tools can concurrently enhance both economic and environmental performance [2,3]. Second, drawing on innovation economics, research investigates the factors influencing green technology innovation behavior in enterprises, utilizing innovation theory to provide strategic guidance and decision-making recommendations for fostering green technology innovation [4]. Third, within the realm of strategic management, studies concentrate on how enterprises can achieve sustainable development and build competitive advantages through the adoption of green technology innovation strategies [5].

The government plays a pivotal role in shaping and implementing enterprises’ green development strategies and in establishing a market-oriented green technology innovation system. While some research has examined the impact of government emission reduction policies on corporate green technology innovation, there is a notable gap in studies focusing on the influence of government environmental protection concerns on such innovation. Government environmental concerns reflect the priority given by authorities to environmental issues. However, due to heterogeneity in resource endowments and development orientations, local governments exhibit varying levels of attention to urban environmental protection. Previous studies have shown that different local governments adopt differentiated policies to achieve green development goals [6], but they have often overlooked the economic and social impacts arising from varying levels of government attention to environmental protection issues.

Therefore, this study uses the text of government work reports from various cities in China to construct an index of the government’s concern for environmental protection using textual analysis and discusses the impact of the government’s concern for environmental protection on enterprises’ green technological innovation. This study focuses on testing and analyzing the relationship between government environmental concerns and corporate green technology innovation from the perspectives of enterprises’ external policies and systems and their internal strategic management in order to construct a theoretical framework for the relationship between government green concerns and corporate green technology development. The contribution of this study lies in the following aspects: First, the city is taken as the spatial scope of the study, revealing the differences in green technology innovation under different spatial conditions. The study and analysis are conducted through the perspectives of urban economics and urban environmental sciences, reflecting the role of the government’s environmental protection concern as it concerns the promotion of innovation in the development of the green technology of enterprises while providing a theoretical basis for the formulation of relevant differentiated policies and the synergistic development of inter-regional co-operation. Second, this study discusses the potential mechanism of government environmental protection concerns affecting enterprises‘ green technology innovation; it introduces three concepts that have been marginalized in previous studies, namely, environmental regulation intensity, enterprise intelligent transformation level, and the enterprise environmental protection concept, which opens up new research perspectives and paths and provides a new way of thinking about how to promote enterprises’ green technology innovation. Third, this paper presents the corresponding heterogeneity analysis according to the results of the study; this is used to examine the three factors of enterprise property attributes, life cycle, and industry. We carry out detailed analysis and research on enterprises’ external performance and internal motivation, revealing the differences in green technology innovation in different enterprises and providing the government with strategic guidance for policy formulation.

To sum up, this study takes the ratio of environmental protection words to the total words in government official texts and the number of enterprise green patent applications as key indicators to measure the degree of government environmental protection concern and enterprise green technological innovation; we study the process of the influence of different government environmental protection concerns on enterprise green technological innovation, as well as the theoretical mechanisms behind these influences, so as to reveal the correlation between the two and to put forward relevant policy recommendations to promote green development strategy and provide a strategic direction for the government. Therefore, this study investigates the following questions: First, does an increase in government environmental protection concern help to promote enterprises’ green technological innovation? Second, through what mechanisms does the government’s environmental concern affect enterprises’ green technological innovation? Third, does the impact of government environmental concern on green technological innovation vary across firms?

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: The Section 2 presents the theoretical foundation and research hypotheses. The Section 3 outlines the research design. The Section 4 discusses the empirical results and analysis. The Section 5 examines the impact mechanism. The Section 6 provides the heterogeneity analysis. Finally, the Section 7 concludes with the research findings and their implications.

2. Literature Review and Research Hypotheses

2.1. Government Environmental Concern and Enterprise Green Technology Innovation

The concept of attention, as utilized in psychological research, elucidates how individuals allocate cognitive resources when processing information. Similarly, governmental attention to environmental protection reflects an emphasis on green development and ecological conservation, indicating the government’s evolving needs and priorities regarding green development.

Based on the perspective of institutional economics, previous studies have discussed the logic of government policy designation on enterprise green technology innovation, which lies in the government’s direct intervention and regulation of the market through the formulation of relevant policies, e.g., explicit industrial policies and strategy-oriented implicit policies, which act on enterprises participating in the market [7]. The first type, explicit industrial policy, is public policy adopted directly by the government, focusing on the direct promotion or inhibition of the development of certain industries; most scholars believe that explicit industrial policy can have a positive effect on enterprise green technology [8,9]. Some studies have also shown that green financial policies can play a significant role in promoting corporate green technology innovation performance [10]. The second category, implicit policies, promotes the development of green technology innovation by creating a favorable macroenvironment for it. However, the impact of government environmental concern on business operations tends to be indirect, e.g., an implicit contract between the government and enterprises on green development; the government’s concern for green development will increase the importance of the market in the jurisdiction on green technology innovation [11], which provides a strategic direction for green industry and green technology. The government’s attention to environmental issues can prompt enterprises to promote green technological innovation by facilitating knowledge sharing and technology transfer, enhancing the market’s understanding of green development [12] so that the efficiency of green technology research and development can be improved; this achieves the effect of improving the innovative performance of enterprises [13,14] and also creates a good investment environment for the enterprise’s green technological innovation research and development [15].

There are also a large number of scholars who focus on a stakeholder theory perspective when carrying out research. Stakeholder theory points out that the business management process should be a comprehensive balance of the interests of various stakeholders; taking into account the different interests of stakeholders is of key significance to the company’s strategic orientation and decision-making [16]. Regarding this theoretical background, when it comes to the government’s environmental protection concern and related regulations, enterprises do not adopt timely and appropriate green response strategies to improve the environmental contribution of enterprises, which leads to a large number of excess environmental costs within the enterprise, causing the interests of stakeholders to be damaged and risking the trust bridge between enterprises and stakeholders [17]. Therefore, under the influence of the pushback effect, enterprises will increase their green technology R&D investment due to stakeholders, actively promote green technology innovation to cope with institutional laws, demonstrate to external stakeholders the extent of the enterprise’s concern for reputation and social image [18], and solidify the source of resources for long-term enterprise value growth. At the same time, excellent stakeholders can also help enterprises accumulate social capital [19], thus safeguarding the interests of stakeholders’ needs; this will, to a large extent, realize the enhancement of an enterprise’s profitability and provide a solid financial foundation for the development of an enterprise’s green technological innovation. (See

Table 1. Literature classification and summary table.

No.	Title of the Study	Author	Opinion
[7]	“Functional or selective policy?—Research on the relationship between government intervention and enterprise innovation in China”	Taoxiong L., Wenwen Y., Yadi Z.	Government market regulation and intervention can occur through policy instruments.
[8,9]	“How green industrial policy affects the constancy of green technology innovation: a fresh proof from the innovation motivation perspective” and “Can the new energy demonstration city policy promote corporate green innovation capability?”	Wang Y., Wang W., and Song Y., Pang X., Zhang Z. et al.	Explicit industrial policies can help promote green technologies in enterprises.
[10]	“The impact of green finance policy on green innovation performance: evidence from Chinese heavily polluting enterprises”	Chang K., Luo D., Dong Y. et al.	Green financial policies can help promote green technological innovation by enterprises.
[11]	“Exploring the carbon emission reduction effect of local government attention: an analysis based on an environmental policy perspective”	Yuxuan C., Li Y., Xianqiao G.	Increased government focus on green development will increase market interest in green technology innovation.
[12,13,14]	“Digital economy, green dual innovation and carbon emissions” and “Digital transformation and corporates’ green technology innovation performance—the mediating role of knowledge sharing” and ““Cooperation” or “competition”: digital finance enables green technology innovation—a new assessment from dynamic spatial spillover perspectives”	Zhang Y., Liu X., Yang J. and Sun Y. and Xie Q., Wang D., Bai Q.	An increase in the government’s green concern can accelerate the efficiency of enterprises’ green technology innovation research and development.
[15]	“A nonlinear relationship between corporate environmental performance and the economic performance of green technology innovation: the moderating effect of government market-based regulations”	Wang M., Li Y., Wang Z.	Increased government green focus creates a superior green investment environment for businesses.
[16]	“Effect of board structure on stakeholders’ centric perspective of a sustainable corporate world	Ali B. B., Kaur M. M., Nitin G.	Stakeholders occupy an important place in corporate decision-making.
[17,18]	Paving a way toward a green world: two-track institutional approaches and corporate green innovation” and “Strategic explanations for the early adoption of ISO 14001”	Roh T., Yu B. and P. Bansal and T. Hunter	Stakeholder theory will make firms respond positively to government policies.
[19]	“ESG and firm performance: do stakeholder engagement, financial constraints, and religiosity matter?”	Ly H., Ha V. N., Lam T. D.	Stakeholders contribute to the growth of corporate social capital.

).

Based on the support of the above theories and empirical studies, we propose the following research hypothesis.

Hypothesis H1:

Government environmental concern positively influences corporate green technology innovation.

2.2. Influence Mechanism of Government Environmental Concern on Enterprises’ Green Innovation Technology

2.2.1. Environmental Regulation Intensity

Environmental regulation refers to a series of laws and regulation policies adopted by the government to ensure the government’s green development and improve the quality of the ecological environment. Based on the view of attention, the attention of the ruler to environmental protection will affect their government’s behavior [20]; i.e., when the local government, as a decision-maker and regulator, pays great attention to environmental protection, it will certainly affect its related policy orientation [21,22]. Environmental regulation is an important policy tool for the government to promote the green transformation of enterprises [23]; when the government’s environmental protection concern increases, the intensity of environmental regulation will be improved accordingly. At present, the common types of environmental regulations in China are command-and-control environmental regulations and economic incentive environmental regulations. The command-and-control type is a common method of enterprise pollution management in Chinese history [24], mainly achieved through the restriction of enterprise pollutant emissions (regarding the enterprise’s behavior of carrying out direct control) to promote enterprises to carry out green technological innovation. Economic incentives are used to encourage enterprises to reduce pollutant emissions through economic means, using the market mechanism to stimulate enterprises to make a strategic response to green development.

As government policies are oriented toward the strategic decisions of enterprises and based on the consideration of enterprise stakeholders, the policies and regulations introduced by the government will directly affect the decision-making process of enterprises’ behavioral choices. Under the guidance of the state’s high-intensity environmental regulation policy, enterprises will pay more attention to the development of green technological innovation, and some scholars have suggested that enterprises’ green technological innovation will be significantly improved [25,26]. The stimulating effect of environmental regulation on green technology innovation mainly stems from the inducing effect of market mechanisms and the backward forcing effect of regulations [27]. That is, the strength of environmental regulations provides external motivation for green innovation, and stricter requirements and standards force enterprises to adopt green innovation to comply with regulations [28]. At the same time, large fines and administrative restrictions under strict environmental regulations can also lead to impediments to firms’ cash flow [29], making financial institutions prefer firms with environmental responsibility and green innovation [30]. It has also been suggested that there is a U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and green innovation, where initial low levels of regulation may inhibit innovation, but as the intensity of regulation increases, eventually, environmental regulation will promote green innovation [31]. To sum up, environmental regulation intensity enhancement for enterprise green technology innovation has a certain role in its promotion; therefore, we put forward research Hypothesis H2a.

Hypothesis H2a:

The government’s environmental concern leads to the improvement of environmental regulation intensity and promotes the green technology innovation of enterprises.

2.2.2. Enterprise Intelligent Transformation

The theory of environmental adaptation states that when the macroenvironment of the market changes, enterprises will make strategic adjustments in order to survive and develop, and they will introduce innovative strategies to keep the enterprise in harmony with the environment. Therefore, in order to effectively respond to the government’s green development strategic plan, enterprises need to adjust their strategic orientation and promote green technological innovation by improving their green sustainable development strategy. With the progress of digital technology, digital and intelligent technology has been integrated into the real economy and occupies an important position [32], attracting the attention and application of a wide range of enterprise groups. Existing studies show that enterprise intelligent transformation plays a significant role in promoting enterprise green technology innovation [33], so intelligent transformation has become a factor in promoting enterprise sustainable development and technological innovation [34]. The government’s increasing attention to environmental protection is often accompanied by the introduction of a series of environmental protection policies [35] that aim to guide and encourage enterprises to operate with a more green and sustainable development strategy; among these, the most common is the economic incentive policy aimed at the intelligent transformation of enterprises. Green policies reduce the initial input cost of the intelligent transformation of enterprises and promote the willingness and enthusiasm of enterprises for transformation [36]. The government’s attention to environmental issues and the enhancement of public awareness of environmental protection also mean that the market demand for environmental protection and intelligence is increasing, forcing enterprises to accelerate intelligent transformation. The intelligent transformation of enterprises can improve the core competitiveness of enterprises by improving the quality of internal control, thereby reducing the agency cost between internal controllers and managers; this alleviates the trouble of financing constraints, increasing the funds that enterprises can invest in green technology research and development, and thus promotes the innovation of green technology of enterprises [37,38,39]. Intelligent transformation can help to eliminate internal and external information asymmetry, efficiently integrate information flow [40], and provide a solid information support system for green technology innovation. Therefore, Hypothesis H2b is proposed.

Hypothesis H2b:

Government environmental concern promotes enterprise green technology innovation by promoting enterprise intelligent transformation.

2.2.3. Enterprise Environmental Protection Concept

Establishing an awareness of green development is a key factor for enterprises to carry out high-quality green technological innovation. Analyzed from the perspective of environmental adaptation theory, enterprises’ promotion of the cultivation of internal environmental protection concepts is essentially a positive response to the trend in green demand from the market and consumers and avoids the risk of being replaced or eliminated. The enhancement of corporate environmental protection concepts will prompt enterprises to more actively fulfill their corporate, social, and environmental responsibilities, which will help enterprises enhance their social image, strengthen their brand value, improve market competitiveness [41,42], and lay the economic foundation for corporate green technological innovation. At the same time, the enhancement of corporate environmental awareness means that enterprises will establish clear environmental objectives, incorporate them into the enterprise’s strategic planning system, and set up corresponding performance assessment indicators [43,44] to promote corporate green technological innovation. Based on the theory of resource dependence, enterprises should also pay attention to obtaining key resources from the surrounding environment that see difficulties in terms of self-sufficiency and reduce costs while expanding the scope of resource acquisition. Therefore, the strengthening of the environmental awareness of enterprises also means that enterprises will strengthen their cooperation and communication with scientific research institutions, universities, and other units; this can be achieved through the establishment of a green technology innovation platform and other ways to promote technology exchanges and resource sharing, helping enterprises to understand the latest technological developments and market demand and accelerating the R&D process to reduce the cost of research and development of green technology. As the government’s environmental protection concern increases, it will have an impact on the enhancement of an enterprise’s environmental protection concept, which will help promote the enterprise’s green technology innovation [45]. Enhanced corporate environmental awareness is also evidenced through an enterprise’s initiative to seek environmental protection resource allocation to promote green technology innovation [46]. Therefore, we propose hypothesis H2c.

Hypothesis H2c:

Government environmental concern promotes corporate green technology innovation by improving corporate environmental protection concepts.

2.3. Differential Impact of Government Environmental Concern on Green Technology Innovation of Different Enterprises

2.3.1. Corporate Property

According to property rights theory, enterprises are typically categorized into state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs). Non-state-owned enterprises generally prioritize the maximization of their own interests, whereas state-owned enterprises balance economic goals with significant social responsibilities. Consequently, as government attention to environmental protection increases, state-owned enterprises are likely to invest more in research and development for green technology innovation due to their broader social obligations. In contrast, non-state-owned enterprises may exhibit preference-driven environmental behavior. When government environmental concern is not directly linked to the economic interests of these enterprises, the marginal impact on their green technology innovation efforts is comparatively weaker, leading to lower investment in green technology.

2.3.2. Enterprise Life Cycle

The enterprise life cycle is an important feature of enterprises. Most scholars divide the enterprise life cycle into three stages: growth, maturity, and decline [47,48]. The different life cycles of enterprises lead to changes in resource allocation and green technology development strategies. Growing enterprises often face limitations in terms of capital, talent, technology, and other resources, and it is difficult to bear the innovation cost required for green technology innovation. The survival of growth-stage enterprises is still unstable, and their market share is small, so these enterprises prioritize the improvement of market share and profits. The green technology innovation of enterprises is not the primary consideration for growth-stage enterprises. In a recession period, enterprises are faced with difficulties such as a gradual decline in market share and a reduction in available resources. The main goal is for enterprises to get back on the right track and improve their profitability. The uncertainty of the input and output of green technology innovation makes enterprises pay insufficient attention to green technology. Mature enterprises exhibit stable market shares and profitability, underpinned by a heightened awareness of corporate social responsibility and a stronger emphasis on environmental protection issues. Furthermore, the increasing governmental focus on environmental protection provides robust support for enterprises’ green technology innovation. Therefore, the business life cycle may also have an impact on the relationship between government environmental concerns and green technology innovation.

2.3.3. Degree of Industry Pollution

The needs and challenges of environmental protection vary depending on the degree of industry pollution. Industry attributes are often divided into high-pollution industries and green industries. Among them, green industries, such as the new energy industry and green transportation industry, are emerging industries with green sustainable development as their goal, so they respond more actively and quickly to the government’s environmental protection policies, and it is easier to enjoy the government’s policy support and tax incentives to promote green technology innovation within these enterprises. The high-pollution industries are mostly the petrochemical, mining, and smelting industries. Due to their own production processes and emission characteristics, these industries are more likely to receive environmental protection attention from the government, and the demand for green technology innovation is more urgent. However, in terms of enterprise green technology innovation, high-polluting industries need to spend more capital investment and resource investment than green industries, which forces high-polluting industries to show low-sensitivity characteristics between the government’s environmental protection attention and enterprise green technology innovation. Therefore, the industry to which the enterprise belongs is highly likely to interfere with the influence of the government’s attention on the enterprise’s green technology innovation. (See Figure 1).

Hypothesis H3:

The difference in property rights attributes, life cycle, and industry may affect the relationship between the government’s environmental concern and an enterprise’s green technology innovation.

3. Research Design

3.1. Sample Selection and Data Sources

Considering that enterprises engaged in green technology innovation are mainly concentrated in the manufacturing industry, this study utilizes A-share manufacturing enterprises listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2023 as the research samples. The primary explained variable is enterprise green technology innovation, with data sourced from the patent database of the National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and filtered based on the green list published by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The core explanatory variable is the degree of urban green development attention, which is derived from the government work reports of various cities. The corporate financial data and corporate governance data are sourced from the CSMAR and CCER databases. In order to avoid the influence of extreme values in the sample and refer to common practices in the literature, we processed the raw data to exclude the following: (1) financial industry firms, due to the special characteristics of their asset and liability structure and the regulatory policies of the financial industry; (2) listed companies for which the listing status is “ST”, “*ST”, “suspended”, “terminated”, or “delisted”; (3) companies for which the key variables data are missing; and (4) firms with abnormal values for financial indicators or other control variables, such as companies with negative asset values and negative institutional ownership. ST and *ST enterprises were excluded because they operate abnormally. These enterprises are usually specially flagged by the exchange for reasons such as two consecutive years of losses, serious deterioration of financial conditions, or major violations of the law. Their operating conditions and profitability are extremely unstable, and they even face the risk of delisting, so their financial data and market performance may not be representative. The deletion of these samples only accounted for 4% of our total sample and did not affect the results.

3.2. Econometric Modeling

By drawing on the research of Qi Shaozhou et al. (2018) [49], the following model was constructed to examine the impact of the government’s attention to environmental protection on green technology innovation:

$${\mathrm{}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}=\mathsf{\alpha }+\mathsf{\beta }{\mathrm{A}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}+{\mathsf{\gamma }\mathrm{X}}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}+{\mathsf{\phi }}_{\mathrm{i}}+{\mathsf{\mu }}_{\mathrm{t}}+{\mathsf{\epsilon }}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}$$

(1)

Here, model (1) is the benchmark regression model. The explained variable is lnGreenpatents, which represents enterprise green technology innovation, using the number of green patent applications (LNAPPLYPATENTS) and green patent authorization (LNGRANTPATENTS) as measurements; green patents include green invention patents and green utility model patents. Attention is the explanatory variable, which indicates the city’s green development attention using municipal government work report text mining.

Considering the importance of environmental protection to local governments, corresponding keywords appear frequently in the annual work reports issued by local governments. In this study, we referred to the studies of Chen Shiyi (2018), Liu X (2023), and others [50,51] and manually collected the government work reports of 31 provinces for the years 2010–2023; second, the text of the government work reports was subjected to lexical segmentation; finally, we statistically counted the frequencies of the occurrences of the environment-related words and calculated their proportions out of the total numbers of words in the full text of the government reports. The word frequency of environmental protection includes 15 terms: environmental protection, environmentalism, pollution, energy consumption, emission reduction, sewage discharge, ecology, green, low-carbon, air, chemical oxygen demand, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, PM10, and PM2.5. In this study, their frequency of occurrence was used as a proxy for measuring the level of environmental concern of city governments.

${\mathrm{X}}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}$ denotes a series of control variables. Referring to existing research, we included the following control variables in the model: enterprise size (LNSIZE), measured as the natural logarithm of the total assets; gearing ratio (LEV), measured as the ratio of total liabilities to total assets; fixed assets ratio (TANGE), measured as the ratio of fixed assets to total assets; net profit margin ($\mathsf{\beta }$); and return on assets (ROA), measured as the ratio of net profit to total assets. The logarithm of the age of a listed company (LNAGE) is measured by the natural logarithm of the number of years since the company went public. (CASH) is measured by using the ratio of net cash flow from operating activities to total assets. The SHARE concentration (SHARE) is measured by the Herfindahl index, and institutional investor shareholding (IFP) is measured as the ratio of the percentage of shares held by institutional investors to the total outstanding shares, as institutional ownership is positively correlated with environmental and social performance (Dyck et al., 2019) [52]. Referring to Liu et al. (2022) [53], we also controlled for individual (${\mathsf{\phi }}_{\mathrm{i}}$) and year (${\mathsf{\mu }}_{\mathrm{t}}$) fixed effects, and ${\mathsf{\epsilon }}_{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{t}}$ denotes random error terms. Considering the possible heteroscedasticity problem, statistical inference was performed using enterprise-level clustering criteria.

3.3. Variable Description

In

Table 2. Variable definitions.

Variable	Variable Definition
LNAPPLYPATENTS	Natural logarithm of the number of enterprise green patent applications plus one
LNGRANTPATENTS	Natural logarithm of the number of enterprise green patents granted plus one
ATTENTION	See definition in text
LNAI	ln(Enterprise Annual Report Intelligence Word Frequency + 1)
LNTAX	Logarithm of the environmental protection tax at the prefecture-level city level
EPTCONCEPT	1 if the company’s environmental protection concept is disclosed, 0 otherwise
LNSIZE	Natural logarithm of the total corporate assets
LEV	Total liabilities/total assets
LNAGE	Natural logarithm of the number of years
TANGE	Total fixed assets/total assets
CASH	Net cash flow generated from operating activities/total assets
ROA	Ending net profit/total assets
LNDRATIO	Proportion of the number of people on the board of directors
SHARE	Number of shares held by the largest shareholder/total number of shares
IFP	Institutional holdings/total number of shares
SOE	1 if the actual controlling entity is a state-owned enterprise; 0 otherwise
FIRM	Corporate dummy variable, used to control for individual fixed effects
YEAR	Year dummy variable, used to control for time fixed effects

, the meanings or measurements of the variables are explained specifically, including the explanations of various variables such as independent variables, dependent variables, and control variables.

In

Table 3. Descriptive statistics.

Variable	N	Mean	SD	Min	Max	VIF
LNAPPLYPATENTS	32,329	0.221	0.621	0	7.158
LNGRANTPATENTS	32,329	0.184	0.532	0	5.948
ATTENTION	32,329	3.835	0.366	0	4.962	1.35
LNSIZE	32,329	22.139	1.287	19.440	26.458	2.35
LEV	32,329	0.413	0.206	0.043	0.858	1.42
LNAGE	32,329	0.205	0.158	0.001	0.757	1.78
TANGE	32,329	0.040	0.065	−0.333	0.226	2.56
CASH	32,329	0.041	0.064	−0.120	0.230	3.42
ROA	32,329	0.040	0.062	−0.160	0.202	1.46
LNDRATIO	32,329	0.375	0.548	0.143	0.600	1.13
SHARE	32,329	0.344	0.148	0.078	0.723	1.38
IFP	32,329	0.436	0.251	0	0.929	1.65

, the descriptive statistics for the variables are presented. Additionally, a rigorous Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) analysis was conducted to assess the presence of multicollinearity among the variables, and the results indicate an absence of such multicollinearity.

4. Empirical Results and Analyses

4.1. Regression Results and Discussion

Table 4. Benchmark regression results.

	(1) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.281 *** (0.017)	0.203 *** (0.019)	0.093 *** (0.012)	0.086 *** (0.018)
LNSIZE	0.384 *** (0.031)	0.312 *** (0.028)	0.117 *** (0.007)	0.071 *** (0.003)
LEV	−0.172 ** (0.0138)	−0.107 ** (0.0121)	−0.059 ** (0.025)	−0.062 ** (0.023)
TANGE	−0.138 ** (0.054)	−0.872 * (0.057)	−0.262 * (0.023)	−0.101 * (0.021)
ROA	−0.102 ** (0.135)	−0.118 ** (0.176)	−0.212 ** (0.056)	−0.235 ** (0.096)
CASH	−0.137 (0.003)	0.078 (0.005)	0.005 (0.005)	0.015 (0.002)
LNAGE	−0.140 * (0.031)	−0.092 * (0.039)	−0.063 * (0.025)	−0.106 * (0.023)
LNDRATIO	0.025 (0.012)	0.023 (0.017)	0.003 (0.005)	0.007 (0.005)
SHARE	0.002 (0.023)	0.004 (0.025)	−0.005 (0.008)	0.003 (0.008)
IFP	0.015 (0.036)	0.017 (0.042)	−0.006 (0.020)	−0.007 (0.012)
Constant	−2.136 *** (0.185)	−2.450 *** (0.151)	−1.220 *** (0.023)	−0.816 *** (0.034)
Firm effect			YES	YES
Year effect			YES	YES
Observations	32,329	32,329	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.324	0.332	0.584	0.586

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; * p < 0.1.

reports the baseline regression results of government environmental concern on enterprises’ green technology innovation. For columns (1) and (2), after adding all explanatory variables, these did not control the firm individual effect and year effect. The results show that the coefficient of government concern about environmental protection is significantly positive at the level of 1%. In columns (3) and (4), all variables were added to control the effects of individual companies and years, which can more accurately estimate the impact of government environmental concern on enterprises’ green technology innovation. It can be seen from the regression results that the regression coefficients of the government’s environmental ATTENTION variable are 0.093 and 0.086; these are significantly positive at the level of 1%, which proves that the improvement of the government’s attention to environmental issues has a significant impact on enterprises’ green technology innovation. Hypothesis 1 is verified.

4.2. Robustness Test

4.2.1. Incorporating Region-Specific Control Variables

Considering that enterprises’ green technology innovation may also be affected by the regional development level, foreign investment, and other factors [54], we added further city-level control variables to conduct a robustness test. The new city-level control variables included (1) the level of economic development (LNPGDP), which is expressed as the natural logarithm of per capita GDP; (2) the industrial structure (STRU), which is expressed as the share of the value added of the secondary industry in the GDP; and (3) the level of foreign investment (FDI), which is expressed as the ratio of the actual foreign investment in the GDP. From the results of columns (1) and (2) in

Table 5. Incorporating region-specific control variables.

	(1) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.057 ** (0.019)	0.053 *** (0.016)	0.093 *** (0.012)	0.086 *** (0.018)
LNSIZE	0.132 *** (0.095)	0.128 *** (0.075)	0.117 *** (0.007)	0.071 *** (0.003)
LEV	−0.079 ** (0.023)	−0.075 * (0.045)	−0.059 ** (0.025)	−0.062 ** (0.023)
TANGE	−0.026 (0.034)	0.013 (0.054)	−0.262 * (0.023)	−0.101 * (0.021)
ROA	−0.203 (0.043)	−0.283 (0.056)	−0.212 * (0.056)	−0.235 * (0.096)
CASH	−0.012 (0.008)	0.005 (0.006)	0.005 (0.005)	0.015 (0.002)
LNAGE	−0053 * (0.032)	−0.065 * (0.035)	−0.063 * (0.025)	−0.106 * (0.023)
LNDRATIO	0.002 (0.009)	0.005 (0.007)	0.003 (0.005)	0.007 (0.005)
SHARE	−0.001 (0.006)	0.001 (0.005)	−0.005 (0.008)	0.003 (0.008)
IFP	−0.002 (0.014)	−0.002 (0.015)	−0.006 (0.020)	−0.007 (0.012)
LNPGDP	−0.045 (0.021)	−0.042 (0.023)
STRU	0.324 (0.018)	0.327 (0.017)
FDI	0.258 (0.029)	0.295 (0.027)
Constant	−2.356 *** (0.035)	−2.395 *** (0.034)	−1.220 *** (0.023)	−0.816 *** (0.034)
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	27,564	27,564	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.612	0.615	0.584	0.586

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; * p < 0.1.

, it can be seen that the regression coefficients of the government’s environmental concern (ATTENTION) on the number of enterprises’ green patent applications (LNAPPLYPATENTS) and the number of authorized green patents (LNGRANTPATENTS) are 0.057 and 0.053, respectively, and both of them are significant at the statistical level of 1%. This suggests that an increase in the government’s attention to environmental issues has a stable and reliable impact on promoting enterprises’ green technological innovation.

The results after the introduction of regional-level control variables indicate that although the level of economic development, industrial structure, and foreign investment in different regions may have some impact on firms’ green technology innovation, the government’s environmental concern still significantly and positively promotes firms’ green technology innovation behavior. This result is consistent with the main findings, suggesting that the government’s environmental policies can effectively transcend regional differences and have a wide range of adaptability and influence. Therefore, this supports the research hypothesis of this study that government environmental concern can significantly promote firms’ green technology innovation.

4.2.2. Replacement of the Dependent Variable

In the process of a patent application, enterprises display speculative behavior, including strategic innovation with a lower innovation degree and less difficulty and substantive innovation with a higher innovation degree and greater difficulty [55]. Strategic innovation behavior may be a kind of speculative behavior, and its purpose may be to obtain government subsidies [56]. Substantive innovation is of great significance for the high-quality development of enterprises [57]. Therefore, we further took substantial innovation with a higher degree of innovation and greater difficulty (that is, the authorization of green invention patents) as the alternative variable of enterprise green technology innovation. The regression results are shown in

Table 6. Replacement of explanatory variable.

	(1) LNGRANTGP	(2) LNGRANTGP
ATTENTION	0.130 ** (0.035)	0.132 ** (0.043)
Control variable		YES
Firm effect	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES
Observations	25,368	25,368
R-squared	0.626	0.646

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ** p < 0.05.

(2). It was found that the regression coefficient of the government’s environmental factor (ATTENTION) to the number of granted green invention patents (LNGRANTGP) is 0.132, which is significant at the 5% statistical level, indicating that the government’s increased attention to environmental issues provides endogenous impetus for enterprises’ green technology innovation. Firms are boosted to engage in more innovative and more difficult substantive innovation behaviors.

After the explanatory variables were replaced, the results reaffirmed the robustness and reliability of the research hypothesis H1. Whether it is strategic or substantive innovation, government environmental concern has a significant effect on firms’ green technological innovation, especially for high-difficulty substantive innovation, which suggests that government environmental policies can motivate firms to engage in more in-depth innovation activities. This finding supports the main conclusions of this study and reinforces the role of government policies in promoting firms’ technological upgrading and innovation.

4.2.3. Lagged Explanatory Variable

Considering that green technology activity is a long-term and complex investment activity [58], there is a certain time lag from enterprise green technology project research and development to the formation of green innovation results, and the current government environmental concern may not directly affect the current enterprise green technology innovation. The intensity of environmental regulation refers to the environmental requirements imposed on enterprises by governments through laws, regulations, standards, and policies. In the process of increasing environmental emphasis, enterprises often need time to adapt to these new regulations and make the necessary resource allocation and technological adjustments. The process of intelligent transformation is often gradual and complex, and companies need time to make technological improvements, train personnel, and integrate systems when implementing an intelligent strategy. Conceptual change within an enterprise cannot be accomplished in the short term; it takes time to cultivate and deepen. Enterprises must communicate adequately with all types of stakeholders to understand their expectations for environmental protection and integrate these expectations into their strategies and operations. Therefore, the lag of government environmental concern for periods 1–3 was used as the explanatory variable to conduct a regression. This could also mitigate potential endogenous problems to some extent. The regression results are shown in

Table 7. Lagged explanatory variable.

	(1) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(2) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(3) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS	(5) LNGRANTPATENTS	(6) LNGRANTPATENTS
L1.ATTENTION	0.081 *** (0.023)			0.076 *** (0.028)
L2.ATTENTION		0.083 *** (0.032)			0.066 *** (0.044)
L3.ATTENTION			0.072 ** (0.065)			0.058 ** (0.032)
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	24321	24321	24321	24321	24321	24321
R-squared	0.626	0.632	0.623	0.632	0.628	0.626

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05.

(1)–(6). It was found that the regression coefficients of the government’s environmental ATTENTION lagging periods 1–3 on the number of (LNAPPLYPATENTS) green patent applications are 0.081, 0.083, and 0.072, respectively. Among them, the government’s environmental concern in lag periods 1 and 2 is still significant at the statistical level of 1%, while the government’s environmental concern in lag period 3 is significant at the statistical level of 5%, indicating that the impact of the government’s environmental concern on enterprises’ green technology innovation has a certain lag, but the lag effect gradually decreases over time. The regression coefficients of government environmental protection patents for the number of corporate green patents with a lag of 1–3 periods are 0.076, 0.066, and 0.058. These results are basically consistent with the findings for the number of enterprise green patent applications.

The results of the lagged variables show that the influence of government environmental protection concerns on enterprise green technology innovation has a certain lag effect, and this lag effect gradually weakens with the passage of time. This is in line with the characteristics of green technology innovation requiring long-term investment and further proves the robustness of research hypothesis H1. Whether in the current period or lagged period, the government’s concern for environmental issues has a significant driving effect on corporate green technological innovation. This result supports the core argument of this study, which is that the government’s environmental policy has a sustained and effective impact on enterprises’ green technological innovation.

4.2.4. Sensitivity Analysis with Different Control Variables Included

As the indicator of patent grants directly reflects the output of enterprises in technological innovation, we chose “LNGRANTPATENTS” as the dependent variable. We chose “LNGRANTPATENTS” as the dependent variable and added control variables sequentially in the regression analysis part; the first column does not add control variables, and the second column adds three: “LNSIZE”, “LEV”, and “TANGE”. The second column adds the three control variables “LNSIZE”, “LEV”, and “TANGE”. Six control variables are added in the third column, and all the control variables are added in the fourth column. The results show that the inclusion of control variables does not affect the explanatory variables in

Table 8. Benchmark regression results.

	(1) LNGRANTPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNGRANTPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.072 *** (0.045)	0.075 *** (0.034)	0.082 *** (0.029)	0.086 *** (0.018)
LNSIZE		0.085 *** (0.025)	0.062 *** (0.022)	0.071 *** (0.003)
LEV		−0.124 ** (0.021)	−0.038 ** (0.035)	−0.062 ** (0.023)
TANGE		−0.432 * (0.027)	−0.334 * (0.045)	−0.101 * (0.021)
ROA			−0.284 ** (0.073)	−0.235 ** (0.096)
CASH			0.008 (0.005)	0.015 (0.002)
LNAGE			−0.134 * (0.025)	−0.106 * (0.023)
LNDRATIO				0.007 (0.005)
SHARE				0.003 (0.008)
IFP				−0.007 (0.012)
Constant				−0.816 *** (0.034)
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	32,329	32,329	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.553	0.542	0.566	0.586

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05; * p < 0.1.

.

4.2.5. Endogeneity Test

Although the results of the above quantitative analysis, after a series of robustness tests, still confirm the research conclusion that the government’s concern for environmental protection helps to promote enterprises‘ green technology innovation activities, there still exists another possibility that enterprises’ green technology innovation behaviors are paid attention to by governmental departments and that there may be a reciprocal causality between the government’s environmental protection concern and enterprises’ green technology innovation. In order to address this issue, referring to the research practices of Arceo (2016) and Wu Chaopeng et al. (2021) [59,60], we adopted urban inverse weather (THERMA LINV) as an instrumental variable2 for two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression analysis. Inverse temperature weather is defined as an anomalous climatic phenomenon in which the atmospheric structure above the ground under certain weather conditions moves upwards to higher temperatures; in general, the temperature of the atmosphere will be lower when the upper temperature is lower, and the temperature will be higher when the upper temperature is higher. The atmospheric layer characterized by the occurrence of an inversion phenomenon is referred to as an inversion layer. This phenomenon diminishes vertical convection within the atmosphere, impairs the movement of air, and subsequently intensifies issues such as atmospheric pollution. Therefore, inverse temperature weather has a direct impact on the aggravation of environmental pollution, encouraging the government to pay more attention to green development issues and heightening their relevance. However, the phenomenon of regional inversion of the thermosphere is due to the overall natural conditions; it is difficult for this to be influenced by the green technology innovation behavior of individual enterprises, so it meets the requirement of exclusivity. Based on this, we conducted an endogeneity test using the instrumental variable method, and the test results are shown in

Table 9. Endogeneity test.

	(1) ATTENTION	(2) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(3) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION		0.618 *** (0.024)	0.616 *** (0.018)
THERMA LINV	0.062 *** (0.027)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES
Observations	26,542	26,542	26,542
R-squared	0.645	0.697	0.692
Kleibergen–Paap LM Statistic (p-value)		136.233 (0.000)	136.233 (0.000)
Kleibergen–Paap Wald F Statistic		139.653	139.653
Stock–Yogo Weak ID Test Critical Values: 10% Maximal IV Size		18.32	18.32

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01.

. Columns (2) and (3) show the regression results for the second stage. The Kleibergen–Paap rk LM test significantly rejected the original hypothesis that the model is under-identified, suggesting that the instrumental variables are correlated with the endogenous explanatory variables. The Kleibergen–Paap rk Wald F-statistic was much larger than the critical value of the Stock–Yogo test for weak instrumental variables, indicating that the model does not have a weak instrumental variable problem. From the regression results in Table 8, the regression coefficients of the government’s environmental concern are 0.618 and 0.616, respectively, which are both significant at the 1% statistical level; this indicates that after considering the potential endogeneity problem, the improvement of the government’s concern for environmental issues still has a significant positive facilitating effect on enterprises’ green technological innovation, once again verifying research hypothesis H1 put forward in this paper.

5. Impact Mechanism Test

5.1. Intensity of Environmental Regulation

Research indicates that environmental protection taxes exert a positive influence on green technological innovation, and environmental regulatory measures, including environmental protection taxes, motivate enterprises to actively engage in the realm of green technological innovation [61]. The government’s concern for environmental protection has continued to increase, and the supervision of environmental issues has been strengthened accordingly. The government has strengthened the close supervision of the daily production and operation activities of enterprises to ensure that enterprises strictly comply with environmental regulatory policies. In the face of strict environmental regulatory requirements, enterprises are forced to adopt more environmentally friendly production methods and technical means to reduce the negative impact on the environment. Enterprises are forced to increase their investment in research and development and the application of green technologies. In this study, referring to the approach of scholars such as Li J. (2022) [62], the environmental protection tax of each prefecture-level city was chosen as a proxy variable for the intensity of environmental regulation, and it was logarithmized. In

Table 10. Analysis of impact mechanisms.

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)
	Intensity of Environmental Regulation		Enterprise Intelligence		Environmental Protection Concept
	LNTAX	LNTAX	LNAI	LNAI	EPTCONCEPT	EPTCONCEPT
ATTENTION	0.062 *** (0.014)	0.082 *** (0.018)	0.102 *** (0.017)	0.045 *** (0.017)	0.156 ** (0.014)	0.172 *** (0.016)
Control variable		YES		YES		YES
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	32329	32329	32329	32329	32329	32329
R-squared	0.645	0.697	0.111	0.183	0.455	0.475

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05.

, column (1) includes only the core explanatory variables when controlling for firm-year variables and individual fixed effects. The results show that the coefficient on government environmental concern is significantly positive at the 1% level. Column (2) adds all levels of control variables, and the effect of government environmental concern on environmental protection tax remains significantly positive after the addition of control variables, suggesting that increased government attention to environmental protection issues increases the intensity of environmental regulation and causes firms to increase their level of green technology innovation. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H2, which states that the government’s environmental concern can significantly strengthen environmental regulation to promote the green technological innovation of enterprises.

5.2. Enterprise Intelligence

Intelligent transformation is regarded as an effective method that can effectively respond to environmental challenges and achieve green development. The intelligent transformation of enterprises is an important driving force to promote green technology innovation [63]. Intelligent technology, as a core element of environmental protection innovation, is receiving increasing attention and is widely used to promote the construction of an environmentally friendly society. In the process of intelligent transformation, enterprises actively introduce advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and artificial intelligence. The application of these technologies enables enterprises to achieve real-time monitoring and data analysis of the production process so as to more accurately grasp the production situation and resource utilization. Through intelligent optimization control, enterprises can adjust production parameters in a timely manner to reduce unnecessary waste and pollution. At the same time, enterprises can find and solve environmental problems in the production process in a timely manner, optimize the production process, and reduce pollutant emissions. The intelligent transformation of enterprises also provides a convenient and efficient research and development platform for enterprises. Enterprises use big data, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies to help them develop more scientific and reasonable environmental protection strategies and promote the development of green innovation.

In this study, we adopted enterprise intelligence indicators as mediating variables. In Table 10, column (3) includes only the core explanatory variables when controlling for enterprise year variables and individual fixed effects. The results show that the regression coefficient of government environmental concern (ATTENTION) on enterprise intelligent transformation (LNAI) is 0.102, and the coefficient of government environmental concern is significantly positive at the 1% level. Column (4) adds all levels of control variables and shows that government environmental concern has a positive effect on enterprise intelligent transformation, indicating that the increase in government environmental concern promotes enterprise intelligent transformation. Therefore, the increase in the government’s concern for environmental issues promotes the enhancement of enterprises’ green technology innovation ability through the path of enterprises’ intelligent transformation. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H2, which states that the government’s environmental concern can promote the intelligent transformation of enterprises to significantly promote their green technological innovation.

5.3. Corporate Environmental Protection Concept

The enterprise environmental protection concept emphasizes that enterprises uphold the concepts, attitudes, and principles of environmental protection and green sustainable development while pursuing economic interests. It reflects enterprises’ awareness of environmental issues and a sense of responsibility [64]. With the continuous improvement of corporate environmental awareness, the sense of responsibility and urgency of enterprises for environmental protection has increased to operate in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way. The enhancement of corporate environmental protection concepts also prompts enterprises to build a more complete green innovation system. Enterprises strengthen internal and external co-operation and establish close partnerships with research institutions, universities, suppliers, etc., to jointly promote the research, development, and application of green technologies. In addition, the enhancement of enterprise environmental protection awareness also implies the cultivation of employees’ environmental protection awareness, which stimulates the enthusiasm of all employees to participate in green technology innovation.

This study adopts the enterprise environmental protection idea index as the mediating variable. In Table 10, column (5) includes only the core explanatory variables when controlling for enterprise year variables and individual fixed effects. The results show that the regression coefficient of government environmental protection concern (ATTENTION) on enterprise environmental protection concept (EPTCONCEPT) is 0.156, and the coefficient of government environmental protection concern is significantly positive at the 5% level. Column (6) adds all levels of the control variables and shows that government environmental concern has a positive effect on corporate environmental philosophy, indicating that increased government environmental concern promotes corporate environmental philosophy. The enterprise environmental protection concept plays an intermediary role in the process of government environmental protection concern to enhance enterprise green technology innovation, and the improvement of government environmental protection concern will make enterprises pay more attention to the implementation of the environmental protection concept; this, in turn, promotes enterprise green technology innovation [65]. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H2, which states that the government’s environmental protection concern can improve the environmental protection concept of enterprises to significantly promote the green technology innovation of enterprises.

6. Heterogeneity Analysis

6.1. Enterprise Property

Enterprise property rights attributes have an impact on the relationship between the government’s environmental protection concern and the enterprise’s green technology innovation. State-owned enterprises are generally under the strict management of the government, carrying heavy social responsibilities while exhibiting dual economic and political attributes [66]. As sustainable development increasingly becomes a focus, state-owned enterprises have become important carriers for the government to promote high-quality progress [67]. Therefore, compared with non-SOEs, SOEs are subject to higher environmental regulatory pressure and stricter market supervision. In this study, the sample was divided into state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises according to the difference in enterprise ownership. In

Table 11. Heterogeneity analysis.

	(1) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.038 ** (0.003)	0.028 ** (0.003)	−0.005 (0.022)	0.028 (0.080)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES	YES
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	32,329	32,329	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.141	0.156	0.172	0.135

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. ** p < 0.05.

, columns (1) and (2) are the effects of the government’s environmental concern on the green technological innovation of state-owned enterprises, and columns (3) and (4) are the effects of the government’s environmental concern on the green technological innovation of non-state-owned enterprises. From the table, it can be seen that the impact of government environmental protection concerns on the green technology innovation of state-owned enterprises is significant compared with that of non-state-owned enterprises. This may be because state-owned enterprises tend to be strictly regulated and controlled by the government and need to bear the corresponding social responsibility.

As SOEs play a crucial role in the country, SOEs are more likely to face environmental regulatory pressure from the government and need to strictly comply with environmental laws and regulations and promote green technological innovation to reduce environmental pollution and resource consumption. Compared with non-SOEs, SOEs have a better incentive mechanism to encourage employees and management to pay attention to environmental performance and actively participate in green technological innovation activities [68]. This incentive mechanism not only promotes the generation of technological innovation but also accelerates the transformation and application of innovation results. As government-controlled or dominated enterprises, the environmental performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) directly affects the image and reputation of the government [69]. From a theoretical point of view, state-owned enterprises, as an important tool of the government, have sufficient resources and financial support, which provides a solid foundation for them to carry out green technological innovation. The improvement of the government’s environmental protection policy has prompted SOEs to increase their investment in green technology research and development to promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading. These findings can be explained by resource base theory and institutional theory, where SOEs have obvious advantages in resource acquisition and policy adaptability and, therefore, perform more actively in green technology innovation.

Therefore, SOEs have stronger incentives to establish a positive brand image through green technological innovations and gain widespread social recognition and support. SOEs have more resources and financial support to provide a solid foundation for them to carry out green technology innovation [70]. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H3.

6.2. Enterprise Life Cycle

Enterprises may face different challenges and opportunities at different life cycle stages, and analyzing the heterogeneity of the life cycle can help in more comprehensively understanding the green technological innovation of enterprises under the government’s environmental concerns and provide more targeted advice and support for enterprise policy formulation [71]. This study draws on Dickinson’s (2011) [72] practice of dividing the life cycle of enterprises, adopting a comprehensive scoring method, selecting four indicators (namely, sales revenue growth rate, retained earnings rate, capital expenditure rate, and the age of the enterprise), and dividing the enterprises into growth, maturity, and decline enterprises using the three quartiles as the standard. In

Table 12. Heterogeneity analysis.

	(1) LNGRANTPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.021 (0.046)	0.031 *** (0.024)	0.016 (0.082)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES
Observations	32,329	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.234	0.243	0.235

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01.

, column (1) is the impact of government environmental protection concern on the green technology innovation of enterprises in the growth period, column (2) is the impact of government environmental protection concern on the green technology innovation of enterprises in the maturity period, and column (3) is the impact of government environmental protection concern on the green technology innovation of enterprises in the decline period; the three columns have been added to all levels of control variables. The regression results are shown in the table. The coefficients of enterprises in the growth and decline periods are not significant, and the coefficients of enterprises in the maturity period are extremely significant and positive, which indicates that an increase in the government’s concern for environmental issues mainly enhances the green technological innovation of enterprises in the maturity period, and this does not have a significant effect on the green technological innovation of enterprises in the growth period and the decline period.

From the perspective of resource and capability differences, mature enterprises usually have a more stable market position, sufficient financial resources, and stronger technological strength [73]. This makes them more capable of responding to government environmental policies and able to integrate resources for green technology innovation more quickly. In contrast, growth-stage firms may find it difficult to cope with the high cost of green technology innovation due to a lack of capital and insufficient technology accumulation. Decline-period firms, on the other hand, are more likely to face the pressure of resource scarcity and declining market share, making it difficult to prioritize green technology innovation. These results are consistent with the life cycle theory that mature firms are more inclined to make long-term investments and technological innovations due to their market stability and higher risk tolerance. In contrast, growth- and decline-stage firms focus more on short-term survival issues and are less likely to invest in green technology innovation. In addition, the management system of mature enterprises is complete. They are more likely to invest in green technology R&D and innovation to respond to the government’s environmental policy requirements. Although growth-phase enterprises are enthusiastic about new technologies and markets, they often face problems such as a lack of capital and insufficient technological accumulation, and these enterprises may find it difficult to bear the additional burden of green technology innovation. Enterprises in recession usually face difficulties such as declining market share and weakening profitability, and most of their resources are used to maintain basic operations or seek transformation opportunities. Green technological innovation requires large investments and is slow to deliver results, making it difficult for them to prioritize this option. In terms of risk tolerance and strategic choices, mature companies have a solid market position and a relatively strong tolerance for risk. They are more willing to invest resources in long-term technology R&D and innovation to consolidate their market position and enhance their competitiveness. Growing and declining enterprises may be more inclined to short-term gains and survival issues and are cautious about long-term investment and innovation [74]. In particular, they may be more inclined to adopt a wait-and-see or conservative strategy in the face of environmental policy uncertainty and high technological risks. Mature companies tend to have better internal management systems and higher policy adaptability [75] and are able to understand and respond to the government’s environmental policy requirements more quickly. They are able to integrate internal and external resources more effectively to formulate and implement green technology innovation strategies. In contrast, enterprises in the growth and decline periods have deficiencies in policy adaptability and implementation efficiency and find it difficult to quickly adjust their strategies to adapt to policy changes. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H3.

6.3. Degree of Pollution in Enterprises

There are significant differences in the production processes and emission characteristics of different industries. Heavily polluting industries, such as energy, chemical, iron, and steel, have relatively greater difficulty in achieving carbon emission reduction due to the high energy consumption and high emission characteristics of their production processes [76]. Low-pollution industries, such as information technology and financial services, have relatively low carbon emissions and are more likely to achieve carbon reduction targets [77]. Based on the 14 heavy polluting industries specified in the “Management List of Industry Classification for Environmental Protection Verification of Listed Companies” issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2008 and matched with the industries in the “Guidelines for Industry Classification of Listed Companies” issued by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) in 2012, in this study, we obtained the listed companies belonging to these heavily polluting industries. Columns (1) and (2) of

Table 13. Heterogeneity analysis.

	(1) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(2) LNGRANTPATENTS	(3) LNAPPLYPATENTS	(4) LNGRANTPATENTS
ATTENTION	0.024 ** (0.005)	0.032 *** (0.003)	0.023 (0.025)	0.043 (0.056)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES	YES
Firm effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Year effect	YES	YES	YES	YES
Observations	32,329	32,329	32,329	32,329
R-squared	0.342	0.234	0.353	0.254

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.05.

show the estimation results of the impact of government environmental protection concern on the green technology innovation of non-heavily polluting firms. It was found that the estimated coefficient of the impact of government environmental concern on green technology innovation of heavily polluting enterprises is not significant; the estimated coefficient is significantly positive in the sample of non-heavy polluting enterprises, which indicates that the increase in the government’s concern for environmental issues can promote the green technology innovation of non-heavy polluting enterprises, but it has no significant impact on the green technology innovation of heavily polluting enterprises.

Governments have often implemented more stringent environmental regulatory policies and emission standards for heavily polluting industries due to their high energy consumption and emission characteristics [78]. Firms in these industries may face higher environmental compliance costs, including costs for technology upgrades and pollution control. Compared to firms in heavily polluting industries, firms in non-heavily polluting industries have less initial pressure on environmental protection. Therefore, when the government pays more attention to environmental issues, enterprises in non-polluting industries are more likely to respond positively and further improve their environmental performance through green technological innovations in order to comply with or exceed the policy requirements. From the perspective of technological innovation thresholds and costs, green technology innovation by enterprises in heavily polluting industries often involves more complex technologies and higher costs [79]. These enterprises have already invested a lot of resources in technological upgrading, and further technological innovation may take longer and require greater investment. On the other hand, enterprises in non-heavily polluting industries are more likely to achieve their environmental goals through green technological innovations due to the relatively low threshold of technological innovation. From the perspective of market expectations and incentives, the market is more sensitive to the environmental performance of enterprises in non-polluting industries, and the ability of enterprises in these industries to innovate in green technology directly affects their brand image and market competitiveness. Therefore, when the government pays more attention to environmental issues, non-heavily polluting enterprises have stronger motivation and willingness to improve green technology innovation to attract more investors and consumers. In contrast, enterprises in heavily polluting industries rely more on traditional market mechanisms and price competition than on environmental performance [80]. From the perspective of transformation difficulty, heavily polluting industries have more historical legacy problems, such as old equipment and highly polluting processes. The solution of these problems requires time and resources and is difficult to transform [81]. Even if the government’s attention to environmental issues increases, heavily polluting enterprises are unable to significantly improve their green technology innovation level because of the difficulty of transformation. Therefore, this supports research hypothesis H3.

7. Conclusions

Based on a sample of manufacturing enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2010 to 2023, this study examined the impact of the government’s environmental protection concern on enterprises’ green technological innovation and its intrinsic mechanism of action. The results of the study show that the improvement of the government’s environmental protection concern helps enterprises carry out green sustainable development strategic planning, and this then promotes the development of green technological innovation. First of all, an improvement in the government’s environmental protection concern directly contributes to an increase in environmental regulation policy, which mandatorily promotes the optimization and adjustment of industrial structure in the direction of green development. In addition, it significantly enhances the core guiding role of enterprise intelligent transformation in strategic management. This means that intelligent development makes enterprises more capable and resourceful in realizing the related innovation of green technology and accelerates the pace of green technology development. Secondly, it indirectly improves the corporate environmental protection concept by improving corporate social responsibility and lays the foundation for green technology innovation from the perspective of internal governance. It is worth noting that after a series of robustness tests, the above conclusions still maintained their robustness and validity.

In addition, there is still much room for the development of green technological innovation in non-state-owned enterprises, and it is necessary to further promote the green and sustainable development of enterprises by strengthening market supervision externally and adjusting incentive mechanisms internally. Furthermore, the enterprise life cycle largely affects the development of enterprise green technology, and this limitation is mainly due to greater economic and resource pressure and unsound internal management systems, which are difficult to adjust. Finally, the enthusiasm of high-polluting industries for green technology innovation and sustainable development strategies is still low. The government should introduce targeted response methods for this industry group, such as the implementation of a differential electricity pricing policy, providing industry-specific green credit, and other methods to avoid the generalization of high-polluting industries and green industries and the appearance of the phenomenon that the form is more important than the substance.

The theoretical contribution of this paper lies in the construction of a new theoretical framework of the government’s environmental concern affecting enterprises’ green technological innovation. This study constructed the theoretical framework from two fundamental theories, namely, institutional economics theory and stakeholder theory, to make up for the inadequacy of the existing theories in the development of green technology where there is less research. Institutional economics theory reveals the intrinsic connection between environmental regulation and the green technology innovation of enterprises and, at the same time, complements the differentiated feedback generated by policy regimes in different geographical perspectives. Stakeholder theory enriches the relationship between stakeholders and corporate strategic decision-making and the effectiveness of their influence on each other, emphasizing the importance of stakeholders for corporate green development and corporate green technological innovation. In the subsequent part of the hypothesis analysis, environmental adaptation theory and resource dependence theory were combined to explore the hypotheses in depth, enriching the motivation of the macroenvironmental factors in environmental adaptation theory for the promotion of the green technological innovation of enterprises; this also strengthens the application of resource dependence theory in the field of the green technological innovation of enterprises.

The policy recommendations and insights of this paper mainly address the following aspects. First, the government, as a guide to appropriately increase the intensity of relevant environmental regulations in enterprises, should analyze and research the intensity of environmental regulations, strengthen communication and co-operation with government departments, and reasonably use the policy support of environmental regulations to reduce the cost of green technological innovation. They should seize green demand in the market brought on by the environmental system, increase capital investment in green technology innovation, and promote the construction of green brands. Secondly, when enterprises attach great importance to the concept of environmental protection in their internal management strategy, they should follow the trend of establishing relevant green technology research and development teams to focus on the research, development, and innovation of green technology and, at the same time, establish a perfect green technology assessment system to optimize the mechanism and process of green technology innovation work. Third, enterprises should actively integrate green technology innovation resources through the big data and Internet of Things platforms formed after intelligent transformation to lay a resource foundation for enterprise green technology innovation. Fourth, when an enterprise enters the maturity period, under the double advantages of abundant funds and stable development, the enterprise should seize the opportunity in time to promote the innovation of green technology by clarifying the enterprise’s future green innovation development plan, vigorously promoting green technological transformation, and introducing technological innovation talents.

The limitations of this study are mainly reflected in the following aspects. First, due to the constraints of data accessibility, the research in this study did not reach a sufficiently fine degree, which affected the accuracy of the conclusions to a certain extent. Second, due to the limitations of the available literature and data, this study mainly focused on the phenomenon in the Chinese context, which limits the possibility of crosscultural comparisons. In the future, this study could be expanded to a global perspective and be analyzed from a global perspective to enhance the robustness of the findings through multicultural comparisons. Furthermore, this study did not fully consider the influence of the potential variable of the educational background of corporate executives and rulers on the results when exploring the relevant influencing factors, which is mainly due to the limitation of space and the fact that the main research angle of this study focused on the government. In view of this, subsequent studies should continue to actively explore this research direction and comprehensively examine and deeply understand its influence mechanism. In summary, although this study revealed the relationship between urban environmental protection concern and corporate green technology innovation to a certain extent, the existence of the above limitations also indicates that there is still a broad research space in this field, which needs to be further explored and improved by subsequent scholars.