PUBLIC ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS PROMOTE REGIONAL GREEN INNOVATION

Green technology innovation is fundamental to solving resource and environmental problems. As a "soft constraint," public environmental concern is increasingly prominent in green innovation. In this paper, we construct a public-innovators evolutionary game model and theoretically demonstrates that public concern is critical for innovators to change their short-sighted behavior and carry out green innovation. Based on the Baidu index data of 289 cities in China from 2011 to 2019, we further empirically tested the effect of public concern on regional green innovation by the fixed effect model and the two-stage least square (2SLS) method. The results indicate that public environmental concern positively affects green innovation. Specifically, for every 1% increase in public concern about the environment, green innovation in the city rose 2.1%. Moreover, government investment in environmental governance is a significant channel through which public concern influences green innovation. Heterogeneity analysis further showed that the positive effect of public concern is more pronounced in economically developed cities than in smaller and less developed cities. Finally, we put forward three possible policy implications: broadening channels for public participation, disclosing environmental information timely, and actively responding to public concerns.