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Enterprise's R&D and Innovation Management

Research on the Impact of Integration of Industry, University, and Research on Green Innovation Performance of Enterprises — Analysis of Mediating and Regulating Mechanisms 

Huang Shunchun1,2 , Wang Zhaowei1 , Liu Qiao1

(1.School of Economics and Management, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou 341000, China; 2.Ganzhou High Quality Development Research Institute, Ganzhou 341000, China)

Abstract: The "double carbon" goal presents a new challenge for China's sustainable eco⁃ nomic growth. Exploring a green, low-carbon, and sustainable development path that aligns with  China's national conditions has aroused wide attention from all walks of life. The importance  and urgency of green transformation for enterprises, particularly those that are heavy polluters, are continually increasing. However, due to the positive externality of green innovation, early  studies paid more attention to how to make up for the loss of positive externality associated with  green innovation and improve the returns on these innovations. They often overlooked the depen⁃ dence of green innovation on external knowledge inputs and paid little attention to the inflow of  such knowledge. In recent years, as our country emphasizes accelerating the domestic cycle of  science and technology, there has been a strong call to enhance the integration of industry, uni⁃ versity, and research led by enterprises, to improve the transformation level of scientific and  technological achievements in our country. Based on this, this study focuses on the industryuniversity-research cooperation innovation system with Chinese characteristics. It analyzes the  impact of the integration of industry, university, and research on enterprise green innovation  from the perspective of the inflow of external knowledge. The research uses data from heavily  polluting listed enterprises of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2010 to 2022. By  quantifying the levels of integration of industry, university, and research, as well as the level of  green innovation through enterprise patent data, the study employs a negative binomial regres⁃ sion model to analyze the effect and mechanism of this integration on green innovation and fur⁃ ther explore how internal and external environment may influence these effects. The findings are  as follows: ①The integration of industry, university, and research significantly promotes enter⁃ prise green innovation. Notably, the promotion effect of this integration on substantive green in⁃ novation is significantly stronger than that of strategic innovation. This conclusion is still valid  after a series of robustness tests and endogeneity processing. ②The test results of the mediating  mechanism show that the integration of industry, university, and research mainly promotes the 2025年第2期 ·77· green innovation levels of enterprises and accelerates the green transformation of enterprises by  accelerating the inflow of knowledge, increasing the influx of capital, and strengthening the envi⁃ ronmental awareness of executives. ③The regulatory mechanism test shows that enterprise digi⁃ talization negatively affects the output of green innovation from the integration of industry, uni⁃ versity, and research. Furthermore, the analysis of environmental regulation shows that increas⁃ ing the intensity of environmental regulation does not significantly regulate the relationship be⁃ tween this integration and the level of enterprise green innovation. Based on the previous analy⁃ sis, it further emphasizes the important influence of external knowledge inflow on accelerating  the green transformation of enterprises and also underscores the important role of the internal  and external environment of enterprises in accelerating this transformation. Therefore, the gov⁃ ernment and other stakeholders of enterprises should not only pay attention to improving the ex⁃ change and cooperation between enterprises, academia, and research institutions but also en⁃ courage enterprises to integrate production with education and research institutes, particularly  in the context of digitalization in heavily polluting enterprises and the intensity of local environ⁃ mental regulations. 

Key words: integration of industry, university, and research; enterprise green transformation; green innovation; heavily polluting enterprise