Impacts of environmental constraint target on green innovation efficiency: Evidence from China

Green innovation has attracted more attention all over the world under the background of resource shortage and environmental pollution. This study explores effects of environmental constraint target on green innovation efficiency by super efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM), panel Tobit and instrumental variables-two stage least square (IV-2SLS) models. Our empirical evidence analyses 30 provinces, China from 2007 to 2018. Green innovation efficiencies of China's provinces show an upward trend, as well as performance a significant cluster effect. Moreover, this paper offers multiple empirical supports for the favorable impacts of environmental constraint target on green innovation efficiency. Finally, environmental constraint target promotes industrial structure upgrading significantly, and then achieves the improvement of green innovation efficiency.