Although the emission reduction and innovation effects of carbon emissions trading have attracted considerable interest among academics and policy makers, there is a lack of empirical research on how carbon trading pilots in China promote regional green innovation. Therefore, we measured the green innovation efficiency of 30 provinces and cities in mainland China from 2005 to 2018, using selected panel data within a super-efficient SBM model that incorporated undesirable outputs. We used a double differential model to evaluate the impacts of carbon trading policies on the green innovation efficiency of seven carbon trading pilot regions. These impacts were confirmed using the double differential propensity score matching method. Our findings were as follows. (1) The implementation of carbon trading policies has a significant and continuous effect of promoting and improving green innovation efficiency in the pilot areas. (2) Carbon trading induces technological innovation effects, enabling green innovation potential to be realized. Regional green innovation efficiency is further improved through energy substitution and structural upgrading effects and subsequently through all three of the above effects. (3) The synergy between the three major effects of carbon trading policies amplifies regional green innovation efficiency. Therefore, the Chinese government should accelerate its efforts to develop and improve carbon markets, promote carbon trading policies, and actively foster synergy among the three effects to achieve green and sustainable regional development.

This article examines the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on urban green innovation using panel data from 285 prefecture-level cities in mainland China from 2008 to 2019. From the perspective of green patents, this article utilizes a two-way fixed-effect model and the mediation effect model to examine the mechanism of the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on urban green innovation in China. Results show that the urban green innovation development in China is relatively slow and can be easily influenced by national policies. More specifically, the relationship between the command-based environmental regulation and urban green innovation presents an inverted non-linear U-shaped model, whereas the relationship between the market-based and voluntary environmental regulation presents a positive U-shaped model. Further investigation of this mechanism concludes that the progression of regional green innovation is primarily accelerated by technological development, effective energy allocation, and industrial structural upgrading. However, the implementation of relevant environmental regulations varies, resulting in various green innovation progression rates. Therefore, in order to achieve the carbon neutrality goal that China proposes, the effectiveness of environmental regulation implementation should be improved. Moreover, the development of various environmental regulation tools should be better coordinated.

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This study investigates how the digital business environment affects firms' innovation input variables. It was discovered that digitization leads to ongoing corporate environment optimization, which improves the effectiveness of innovation. One of the institutional environment factors, digitalization, increases the redundancy of government subsidies on businesses' investments in innovation. It also helps to eliminate duplication in innovation investment through the financial environment and the protection of legal rights. With increasing marketization in the informal institutional framework, the degree of R&D investment redundancy lowers while R&D human resource investment redundancy grows. Digitization not only lowers the grade of innovation, but it also has a negative association with the duplicate nature of commercial R&D investments. The authors' research combines institutional environment theory and digital development to establish a new empirical foundation for corporate development in order to boost innovation efficiency.

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