Environmental regulation and high-quality economic growth: quasi-natural experimental evidence from China

The relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth is difficult to reconcile, resulting in the “involutionary” dilemma of local government environmental governance. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed industrial companies between 2010 and 2019, this paper collected data on environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection and empirically investigated the impact of both on high-quality economic growth of companies using the difference-in-difference method. First, both environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection significantly promote high-quality economic growth, according to the findings. Second, the two-pronged policy effect of environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection is more significant, and the promotion effect on high-quality economic growth is greater than the effect of the two policies separately. Third, the dual policy action significantly promotes high-quality economic growth of state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises; however, non-state-owned enterprise economic growth is more sensitive to the central environmental protection inspection, and policy effects show a heterogeneous pattern in the east, central, and west regions. Therefore, the effective integration of environmental protection interview and central environmental protection inspection should be accelerated so that environmental pollution control and economic growth can be carried out together.