The Impact of Human Capital on Green Technology Innovation—Moderating Role of Environmental Regulations

Green technology innovation can bring about dual benefits, i.e., technological progress and energy conservation, as well as emission reduction, which are regarded as effective means to achieve economic development and environmental protection. The influencing factors of green technology innovation have been studied from multiple angles. In order to promote the level of green technology innovation in China from a new perspective, this paper selected human capital as the independent variable, and empirically investigated the direct impact of educational and healthy human capital on green technology innovation, based on the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet) from 2006 to 2016. Meanwhile, considering the current environmental policy system in China, this paper took environmental regulations as moderating variables, and analyzed the moderating role of three environmental regulations, namely, command-and-control environmental regulations, market-incentivized environmental regulations, and public voluntary environmental regulations, in the impact of human capital on green technology innovation. It was found that (1) educational human capital, with a three-period lag, and healthy human capital significantly promotes green technology innovation; (2) command-and-control environmental regulations, with a one-period lag, and market-incentivized environmental regulations promote green technology innovation, while public voluntary environmental regulations have an insignificant impact on green technology innovation; (3) the moderating effect of command-and-control and market-incentivized environmental regulations in the impact of human capital on green technology innovation is not significant. For public voluntary environmental regulations, the moderating effect between educational human capital and green technology innovation is significantly negative, while the moderating effect of healthy human capital on green technology innovation is not significant.