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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Moving Towards Low-Carbon Transition:
The Impact of China's New Environmental
Protection Law on Corporate Environmental
Responsibility in Listed Companies
1
School of Accounting, Wuhan Textile University, 430200, Wuhan, China
Submission date: 2024-08-07
Final revision date: 2024-10-03
Acceptance date: 2024-10-28
Online publication date: 2024-12-16
Publication date: 2025-11-14
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(6):8453-8468
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
As the strictest environmental protection law in China's history, it is still unknown whether the
New Environmental Protection Law (NEPL) can provide support for the low-carbon development of
firms. This study employs the difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze a sample of 3,525 firmyear
observations in China from 2011 to 2019. The objective is to determine whether and under what
circumstances the NEPL encourages firms to engage in CER. The empirical findings provide strong
evidence that 1) the NEPL has notably improved the level of CER for heavily polluting enterprises, but
the effect is attenuated over time; 2) for heavily polluting firms in regions with lower environmental
regulation levels and non-state-owned heavily polluting enterprises, the effect of the NEPL is more
pronounced; and 3) higher levels of public participation amplify the effect of the NEPL on heavily
polluting firms’ CER. Our research significantly contributes to the understanding of the effect of
the NEPL on CER, providing valuable insights that enrich the existing literature and have practical
implications for environmental governance in China.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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