Impact of River Chief System on Green Technology Innovation: Empirical Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt

The River Chief System (RCS) is an innovative environmental governance system with Chinese characteristics that is significant for green and sustainable development, and green technology innovation (GTI) is a key step to achieve this goal. However, existing studies have not proved the effect of RCS on GTI. Therefore, this paper takes the implementation of RCS as a quasi-natural experiment and the progressive spatial difference-in-differences model is used to empirically investigate the effect of water environment governance policies on GTI, based on the panel data of 108 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2004 to 2019. The results of this research show that: (1) GTI in the YREB shows a rapid growth trend, and the lower reaches are generally higher than the middle and upper reaches; (2) RCS can improve the local GTI by 19.43% and has a significant positive incentive effect on adjacent regions' GTI, while the GTI itself can generate a positive spillover effect for adjacent regions; (3) Heterogeneity analyses indicate that RCS has a stronger facilitation in the spontaneous parallel diffusion form cities and middle and lower reaches, while having an inhibition in riverine cities. In terms of spatial effects, RCS has a stronger positive spillover effect in the adjacent untreated area and upper reaches, while having a negative spillover effect in the spontaneous parallel diffusion form cities; (4) Government governance, official incentive and social supervision can enhance the effect of RCS on GTI. This study provides useful empirical evidence for environmental governance and green sustainable development of the YREB.