Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1509506
This article is part of the Research Topic Challenges and Solutions in Forecasting and Decision-Making in Marine Economy and Management View all 20 articles

Marine Environmental Regulation and Green Technology Innovation: Evidence from Enterprises in Coastal Areas of China

Provisionally accepted
Junchen Jiang Junchen Jiang 1Han Sun Han Sun 2*
  • 1 Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
  • 2 School of Accounting, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Liaoning, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    It is of great significance to explore the effect of marine environmental policies to promote the sustainable development of the marine economy. This article takes the 'National Marine Ecological Civilization Demonstration Zones' (hereinafter referred to as 'demonstration zones') as a quasi-natural experiment to explore the effects of marine environmental regulation on green technology innovation of micro-enterprises in coastal areas and on the high-quality development of the regional economy. This article finds that marine environmental regulation can promote the green technology innovation of enterprises in coastal areas. The mechanism analyses show that marine environmental regulation increases the government's attention to the environment and promotes industrial structure upgrading, thus positively affecting local enterprises' green technology innovation. Cross sectional analyses show that the increase in green technology innovation is more pronounced in resource-based cities, areas with high marine economic dependence and high green finance development, as well as in enterprises with low financial constraints and marine-related enterprises. Additionally, marine environmental regulation significantly increases green invention patents and independent green innovation by enterprises in coastal areas.At the macro level, we find that the impact of marine environmental regulation on green technology innovation ultimately leads to high-quality development of the local economy. This article provides empirical evidence for the innovation behavior of enterprises in coastal areas and expands the research perspective of the ecological and economic effects of marine environmental regulation.

    Keywords: Marine environmental regulation, Green technology innovation, coastal areas, China, Economic and Environmental Effects

    Received: 11 Oct 2024; Accepted: 16 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Jiang and Sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Han Sun, School of Accounting, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Liaoning, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.