The Role of Foreign Technology Transfer in Improving Environmental Efficiency: Empirical Evidence From China’s High-Tech Industry

Abstract

In recent years, China’s high-tech industry has made remarkable technological progress, but it has also brought serious environmental pollution, which has aroused great concern about its environmental efficiency. Although foreign technology transfer is considered as important ways for technological progress of the high-tech industry, the existing research on what role foreign technology transfer plays in improving the environmental efficiency of the high-tech industry is still lacking. Based on China’s interprovincial panel data from 2008 to 2017, we evaluated the environmental efficiency of the high-tech industry using the super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs. We then used the Tobit model to analyze the impact of technology introduction (TI) and foreign direct investment (FDI)—two major types of foreign technology transfer—on the environmental efficiency of the high-tech industry. The results of the super-efficiency SBM model show that the average environmental efficiency of China’s high-tech industry is only 0.4375. Except for Guangdong, Shanghai, and Beijing, most of the provinces in China have low environmental efficiency. The provinces with high environmental efficiency are in the eastern region, whereas the provinces with low environmental efficiency are concentrated in the central and western regions. Tobit regression results confirm the difference in the role of technology import and foreign direct investment in the improvement of environmental efficiency in China’s high-tech industry. Technology introduction has a significant positive impact on environmental efficiency. FDI also promotes environmental efficiency, but it is not statistically significant. These findings were confirmed by a series of robust tests. This study not only deepens our understanding of the environmental efficiency of China’s high-tech industry but also expands the theoretical research on the relationship between technology transfer and environmental efficiency.

Does industry-university-research cooperation promote the environmental efficiency of China’s high-tech manufacturing?

“…However, there is also a lack of in-depth research on whether IURC can promote the EE of China's HTM. Second, the existing literature usually uses a two-stage method (such as DEA-Tobit) to study China's industrial EE (Wang et al, 2017;Peng et al, 2022). This method does not separate random factors when analyzing the factors influencing EE, which may lead to errors in the estimates.…”

“…Production inputs include labor and capital. Labor was reckoned by employment in HTM (Peng et al, 2018). Capital was calculated using the perpetual inventory method (PIM) (Chen et al, 2018).…”

“…Capital was calculated using the perpetual inventory method (PIM) (Chen et al, 2018). Take the total output value and the output value of new products as desirable output indicators (Peng et al, 2022). Due to the availability of HTM environmental pollution data, sulfur dioxide emissions and industrial wastewater emissions were selected as undesirable output indicators in this study (Chen et al, 2021).…”

“…Some literatures have further empirically tested the role of these factors in China's HTM (Peng et al, 2022). Related studies show that in addition to IURC and RD, marketization level (MAR), enterprise size (ES), human capital (HC), government support (GS), FDI, and regional factors may also be important factors affecting the EE of HTM.…”

“…However, due to the neglect of environmental efficiency (EE), China's HTM does not present the characteristics of high added value and low pollution, and environmental pollution incidents are frequently reported in the press (Wu Q. et al, 2022). Furthermore, in the increasingly ecologically fragile eastern region, environmental regulation has caused many HTM enterprises to transfer their highly polluting processing and manufacturing links to the central and western regions, intensifying people's concern that these regions will become "pollution refuges" (Peng et al, 2018). Therefore, how to improve EE has become an important practical problem for the sustainable development of Chinese HTM.…”