Impact mechanism of environmental protection tax policy on enterprises’ green technology innovation with quantity and quality from the micro-enterprise perspective

Promoting green technology innovation through environmental tax is an important tool to achieve green development. Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2020, this research examines the impact mechanisms of environmental tax policies on the quality and quantity of enterprise green technology innovation from the micro-enterprise perspective. The underlying mechanisms and heterogeneous effects were analyzed empirically using pooled OLS model and the mediated effects model. The results indicate that the environmental tax policy has an inhibitory effect on the quantity and quality of green patents, and the impact on the quantity is more significant. The mechanism analysis suggests that the environmental tax inhibits green technology innovation via accelerating capital renewal and environmental investment. Heterogeneity analysis shows that environmental tax has an inhibitory effect on green technology innovation behavior of large-scale enterprises and eastern region enterprises, while it has a boosting effect on green technology innovation of western region enterprises, and its effect on quantity of innovation is greater than that on quality. This study helps Chinese enterprises to better achieve green development from the perspective of green taxation and provides important empirical basis for achieving the win–win goal of economic growth and environmental development.