Research on the innovation of incentive norms and the high-quality development path of the business environment

China is currently facing a significant contradiction between the surge in the number of incentive policies and the low response rate of enterprises to these policies. This highlights a structural flaw in incentive-based norms characterized by an emphasis on promises but a neglect of fulfillment. Existing research has predominantly focused on institutional supply deficiencies, such as weak rule of law, while overlooking the systemic imbalances within the incentive policies themselves. In particular, there is a lack of quantitative analysis on the effectiveness of policy implementation and institutional costs, resulting in insufficient theoretical explanatory power and policy practices trapped in a “cycle of incentive ineffectiveness.” To break this cycle, it is crucial to understand the core mechanisms of incentive-based norms. Unlike the penalty and constraint logic of traditional command and control policy tools, incentive-based norms stimulate market vitality through a “guidance and reward” mechanism. To test their effectiveness, this study, based on provincial panel data from 2017 to 2022, validates the positive impact of the normative framework for application, legal consequence systems, and evaluation normative systems of incentive-based norms on the business environment. The findings indicate that the normative framework for application, consequence systems, and evaluation systems play distinct roles in different domains, and the optimization of the business environment relies on the synergy of these three components. It is recommended to clarify incentive targets, improve the legal consequence systems, and establish effect evaluation mechanisms to optimize the incentive-based normative system, thereby enhancing corporate policy response rates and resource allocation efficiency.