The impact of environmental regulation on technological innovation has been widely discussed in the academic circle. Based on the panel data of 403 Chinese manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2015, this paper explored the role of voluntary environmental regulation in technological innovation. The results showed the following: First, both voluntary environmental information disclosure and environmental management system certification had a positive effect on corporate innovation investment. Second, compared with the impact of environmental information disclosure, the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate innovation investment was more significant. Third, there was a significant positive interaction between environmental information disclosure and environmental management system certification. Finally, the effect of voluntary environmental regulation on corporate technological innovation in heavily polluting industries was stronger than that in lightly polluting industries.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how R&D originality functions in an open innovation process after the introduction of knowledge spillovers (KSs).
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the research framework, the authors use hierarchical regression based on questionnaire data from 211 emerging enterprises in China.
Findings
Consistent with the proposed framework, the authors find that the KS effect mediates the positive relationship between openness and innovation performance. In addition, R&D originality weakens the impact of the KS effect on innovation performance.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation is that the questionnaire survey the authors choose for data collection has some natural defects; furthermore, the testing method and research framework need to be improved.
Practical implications
Several implications of the findings for managerial practices are discussed.
Originality/value
First, the research expands the existing theoretical construct by introducing the KS effect into the open innovation process; second, the authors reveal the negative impact of R&D originality on the open innovation process.
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