Can Environmental Regulations Promote Firms’Proenvironmental Behavior?Micro Evidence on EnvironmentalProduct Imports

How firms respond to environmental regulations is the key to measuring the effect of these regulations, and firms taking the initiative to assume environmental responsibility and adopt more proenvironmental behaviors in the production decision-making process is crucial for green development.Based on the databases of merged Chinese industrial enterprises, firm pollution discharge, and customs, this paper examines the influence and mechanism of environmental regulation on the proenvironmental behavior of enterprises from the perspective of environmental products.Benchmark analysis revealed that environmental regulations improve the extension and intensive margins of firms' environmental products.That is, environmental regulations effectively promote firms' proenvironmental behavior.The mechanism analysis reveals that the cost effect and technology effect are important factors influencing the impact of environmental regulations on the proenvironmental behavior of firms.Furthermore, the expansion analysis shows that the influence of market incentives and command-andcontrol environmental regulations on firms' proenvironmental behavior is more significant and that the effect of public voluntary environmental regulation is relatively weak.This paper provides useful policy implications for improving the policy effect of environmental regulations from a microperspective.