Does civil environmental protection force the growth of China's industrial green productivity? Evidence from the perspective of rent-seeking

Based on the decision analysis of heterogeneous enterprise between green technology innovation and rent-seeking, this paper formulates the Hybrid-Luenberger index considering undesirable outputs and studies difference in the response of regional industrial green productivity to civil environmental protection. Empirical study on China's regional industrial data from 1997 to 2011 shows that: (1) Compared with the intensity of environmental pollution and other passive environmental protection incentives, the public are more sensitive to per capita income level, education quality, health concern and other rational environmental protection incentives. (2) The increase in the civil environmental protection effect promotes the industrial green technology innovation, while the rent-seeking activities have a significant negative effect on green productivity. (3) The civil environmental protection of the eastern coastal area has more significant effect on the industrial green productivity compared with that of the central and western inland area. (4) As the quantile of the industrial green productivity increases from the low point to high level, the positive effects of the civil environmental protection on the industrial green productivity turn to be more significant, and the rational environmental protection have positive and negative effects on high and low quantile of the industrial green productivity, respectively, which proves that the “Potter Hypothesis” can only be established on the condition that producers are approaching to the technology frontier.