Abstract: This paper analyzes theoretically the compliance costs effect and innovation compensating effect of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation. Under these two kinds of mechanism, the effect of environmental regulation on innovation depends on the degree of environmental regulation showing U-shaped nonlinear relations. We use the Chinese industrial enterprises data to test empirically this impact. The results show that: environmental regulation and production innovation show a U-shaped relationship. For most enterprises current environmental regulation intensity has not yet reached the inflection point of the U-shaped curve and still in the stage of the downward phase of the U-shaped curve. At the same time, on the basis of the corporate pollution degree for sub sectors, the U-shaped curve inflection point of heavily polluting industries located in the right side of the slightly polluted industries’. Therefore heavily polluting enterprises need higher environmental regulation intensity to achieve the inflection point of U-shaped curve and promote enterprise product innovation. Therefore, We treat the relationship between environmental regulation and innovation with the perspective of development, strengthen environmental regulation, and formulate different environmental policies for different enterprises. Only in this way can make environmental regulation become the impetus of enterprise innovation and achieve a win-win economic growth and environmental protection.

摘要： 本文从理论上分析了环境规制对于企业创新的“遵循成本”效应和“创新补偿”效应，在这两种效应的共同作用下，环境规制对于创新的影响依赖于环境规制本身的累积程度，会表现出非线性的U型关系，并运用中国工业企业数据进行实证检验。研究表明：环境规制与企业产品创新呈现 U 型关系，对于大多数企业而言，中国现阶段环境规制强度还未达到U型曲线的拐点，仍处于U型曲线的下降阶段。此外，依据企业污染程度分行业来看，重度污染行业U型曲线的拐点位于轻度污染行业的右侧，即重度污染的企业需要更高的环境规制强度才能达到U型曲线的拐点，实现环境规制促进企业进行产品创新。因此，应当用发展的眼光看待环境规制与创新的关系，加强环境规制强度，并且在制定环境政策时对不同行业企业实施差别政策，使环境规制成为推动企业创新的动力，实现经济增长与环境保护的双赢。