Can public participation constraints promote green technological innovation of Chinese enterprises? The moderating role of government environmental regulatory enforcement

With the deteriorating environmental problems in China and the increasing public awareness of environmental protection, polluting enterprises face more and more pressures to improve environmental protection. Public participation has become an important force in promotion of enterprises green technological innovation. Based on the perspective of public participation, this study divides public participation constraints into three dimensions: news media constraints, community resident constraints, and ENGOs constraints. This study selected Chinese provincial data from 2009 to 2018, explored the influence of different public participation constraints on green technological innovation, and examined the moderating role of environmental regulatory enforcement. According to the estimates, if the constraints of news media and community residents increase by 1 unit, then the green technological innovation will increase by 0.210 and 0.123 units, respectively. However, the ENGOs constraints have not effectively promoted the green technological innovation. Environmental regulatory enforcement has not yet played a positive moderating role in the relationship between news media constraints and community resident constraints and green technological innovation, but only played a positive moderating role in the relationship between ENGOs constraints and green technological innovation. According to research results, references are provided for sustainable development of Chinese enterprises and construction of government environmental governance models.