Is the R&D Expenditure of Listed Companies Green? Evidence from China’s A-Share Market

Whether the company’s R&D expenditure has the green attribute is the focus of current environmental economics research. This paper empirically tests the relationship between R&D expenditure and CO(2) emission intensity by taking Chinese A-share listed companies, from 2016 to 2020, as samples. The research found that the R&D expenditure of the company has a significant green effect of reducing its carbon dioxide emission intensity. Further research shows that the institutional investors play a mediating role in the relationship between R&D expenditure and CO(2) emission intensity. And the “governance effect” of institutional investors is affected by “short-termism”, which leads to the “myopic” of enterprises’ management and urges them to invest in the short term, thus being detrimental to the company’s environmental performance. In addition, the green attribute of R&D expenditure only exists in the company which has a high concentration of institutional investors, indicating that the institutional investors possess the ability to identify the green value of R&D investment. Extended discussion shows that the investment of R&D personnel plays a moderating role in the first half path of the above mediating mechanism, which weakens the negative relationship between institutional investors and R&D investment. This paper provides empirical evidence for the government to improve environmental performance at the enterprise level. The results of this study show that, in order to reduce the CO(2) emission intensity of enterprises, the government should improve incentives for enterprise R&D, make rational use of the information identification ability of institutional investors, advocate long-term investment philosophy, and strengthen the training of R&D team leaders and technicians.