The Impact of Environmental Protection Investment and Equity Balance Degree on Economic Performance and Eco-Autonomy: An Empirical Study of China’s A-Share Listed Companies

Enterprises are not only the main source of energy consumption and pollution emissions but also a key force in environmental governance. There is no doubt that the positive impact of enterprise environmental protection investment (EPI) on other stakeholders, but the impact on its own economic performance is the key to determining the scale of EPI and increasing the motivation for Eco-autonomy. This paper selects 691 companies listed on China’s A-share market from 2012 to 2022 as research samples, introducing the equity balance degree as the moderator variable, and empirically investigating the impact of the relationship by using a panel multivariate regression model. The results show that the relationship between EPI and its economic performance is a U-shaped curve, and it is related to Eco-autonomy. The equity balance degree can mitigate the negative influence of the relationship, but it is significantly different between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. Accordingly, it prompts the following policy implementation: the Chinese government should develop differentiated environmental incentives and regulatory policies. It should focus on private enterprises with high-equity balance degrees and high pollution levels, and it should encourage state-owned enterprises to increase the scale of ex ante preventive investment through policy incentives.