Environmental pollution

Engineering

Ecology

Biology

Pollution

Environmental economics

Microeconomics

China

Green innovation

Economics

Computer science

Tax reform

Tax rate

Business

Current (fluid)

Computer network

Waste management

Political science

Monetary economics

Public economics

Externality

Environmental tax

Environmental science

Technology innovation

Environmental protection

Industrial organization

Finance

Natural resource economics

Environmental technology

Order (exchange)

Resource (disambiguation)

Electrical engineering

Journal of Cleaner Production

The exploitation and utilization of mineral resources can induce externality problems. An environmental tax rate directly affects pollution reduction results and the green production of resources industries. Considering the higher pollution emission of resource-based industries, China’s environmental tax rate is too low to fully compensate for externality and it impedes technological innovation. This paper firstly calculates the optimal tax rate of China’s resource-based industries, based on the statistical relationship between environmental tax rates and pollution emissions. Then, the efficiency of green technology innovation is evaluated. The results show that environmental externalities have a depressing effect on green technology innovation. Furthermore, this paper constructs a threshold effect model of the impact of the optimal environmental tax rate on green technology efficiency. It turns out that the air pollution tax rate has a non-linear effect on green technology innovation, and the implementation standard of tax is lower than the optimal tax rate. In addition, the water pollution tax has no optimal level and has an uncertain impact on green innovation. Therefore, China should gradually increase the environmental tax rate, in order to achieve pollution reduction and technological innovation.

Can the current environmental tax rate promote green technology innovation? - Evidence from China’s resource-based industries