Impact of Technology Innovation on Air Quality—An Empirical Study on New Energy Vehicles in China

China’s high economic growth has been accompanied by deteriorating air quality in recent decades. This paper aims to explore the relation between technology innovation (defined as the invention patent counts of each region) of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in China and air quality. A panel fixed effect model is used to analyze this relation and the mediating effect methods are used to examine the role of the output of NEVs (defined as the annual production quantity of NEVs in each region (unit: thousand)). The results of our study show: (1) the impact of the technology innovation of NEVs on air quality is positive and statistically significant; (2) the mediating role of the output of NEVs is confirmed in the relation between NEVs innovation and air quality improvement; (3) the technology innovation of NEVs has a more notable impact on the air quality in the regions with higher vehicle and vessel tax (VVT). The present study implicates for the first time that the technology innovation of NEVs can enhance air quality with the mediating role of the output of NEVs and the moderating role of VVT.