Business School, Central South University, No.932 South Lushan Road, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Apr;30(18):52227-52240. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-25976-9. Epub 2023 Feb 24.
While previous studies have recognized the importance of resource tax in environmental governance, we know relatively little about whether resource tax can get a win-win both in corporate financial performance (CFP) and corporate environmental performance (CEP). Using China's resource tax reform (RTR) policy in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment and adopting a difference-in-differences (DID) strategy, we estimate the real effect of resource tax on CFP and CEP. The results show that RTR increases the financial performance of the regulated firms by 32.26% and the environmental performance by 46.15% compared to the non-regulated firms, indicating that resource tax can promote firms' sustainable development. Mechanism analysis shows that the effect of resource tax is mainly driven by firms' technological innovation and productivity improvement. Moreover, we further find that RTR performs better for firms with weaker tax burden-shifting ability and firms located in areas with poorer resource endowments. Overall, our study not only provides evidence for the Porter hypothesis from the perspective of resource tax, but also offers important policy implications for developing countries in their pursuit of sustainable economic and environmental development.
虽然先前的研究已经认识到资源税在环境治理中的重要性，但我们对于资源税是否能够在企业财务绩效（CFP）和企业环境绩效（CEP）方面实现双赢知之甚少。本文利用中国 2016 年的资源税改革（RTR）政策作为准自然实验，并采用双重差分（DID）策略，估计了资源税对 CFP 和 CEP 的实际影响。结果表明，与非监管企业相比，RTR 使受监管企业的财务绩效提高了 32.26%，环境绩效提高了 46.15%，这表明资源税可以促进企业的可持续发展。机制分析表明，资源税的效果主要是由企业的技术创新和生产力提高驱动的。此外，我们还发现，对于税负转嫁能力较弱的企业和资源禀赋较差地区的企业，RTR 的效果更好。总的来说，本研究不仅从资源税的角度为波特假说提供了证据，也为发展中国家追求可持续的经济和环境发展提供了重要的政策启示。
