Article
Green Taxation Promotes the Intelligent Transformation of
Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises: Tax Leverage Theory
Longzhen Yu , Jianhua Zhu * and Zhixian Wang
Citation: Yu, L.; Zhu, J.; Wang, Z.
Green Taxation Promotes the
Intelligent Transformation of Chinese
Manufacturing Enterprises: Tax
Leverage Theory. Sustainability 2021,
13, 13321. https://doi.org/10.3390/
su132313321
Academic Editor: Luigi Aldieri
Received: 15 October 2021
Accepted: 22 November 2021
Published: 1 December 2021
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
College of Economics and Management, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, China;
yulongzhen@qust.edu.cn (L.Y.); wangzhixian62@126.com (Z.W.)
* Correspondence: mejhzhu@qust.edu.cn
Abstract:
A key issue that concerns governments is how to formulate optimal technology subsidies
and green tax standards to promote the intelligent transformation of manufacturing enterprises. In
this work, the Pollutant Emission Indicator Trading Mechanism (PEITM) is proposed, and green
taxes are divided into Tax of Pollutant Emissions (TPE) and the Tax of Excess Pollutant Emissions
(TEPE). On this basis, we study the impact of green taxes and technology subsidies on the intelligent
transformation of enterprises in different manufacturing environments from the government’s
perspective and provide the optimal government subsidy scheme under different green tax policies.
Although it seems counter-intuitive, enterprises’ usual responses to increases in TPE and TEPE are
non-monotonic. Moreover, we find a threshold effect for the government’s green taxation. Blindly
increasing or reducing taxes may not promote intelligent transformation, but instead force enterprises
towards negative choices. Lastly, an effective measure for the government to promote the intelligent
transformation of manufacturing enterprises is proposed: by properly adjusting TPE and TEPE,
governments can produce more cost-effective intelligent products than ordinary ones. Consequently,
intelligent products will sell better than ordinary products, and manufacturing enterprises will be
able to consciously carry out intelligent transformation to remain viable.
Keywords:
intelligent transformation; green taxes; environmental governance; technology subsidy;
market transaction mechanism
1. Introduction
With the integration and development of the traditional manufacturing industry
with 5G, artificial intelligence, and other next-generation information technologies, the
intelligent transformation of the traditional manufacturing industry for the sustainable
development of enterprises has become a field of great research interest [
1
–
3
]. For exam-
ple, Sany Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (Changsha, Hunan, China) established an intelligent
monitoring and data analysis platform—the Enterprise Control Center—by continuously
increasing investment in technology research and development and technological innova-
tion. Through the interconnection of production equipment and intelligent monitoring,
real-time remote monitoring enabled the enterprise to increase the operating rate by 10%,
increase the utilization rate by more than 50%, reduce the defect rate by 14%, and reduce
the consumption of heat, gasoline, diesel, and electricity. However, many small- and
medium-sized enterprises refuse to carry out intelligent transformation, mainly because
of the high cost and risk of intelligent transformation, which hinders many enterprises
from transformation [
4
]. Although many studies have shown that government subsi-
dies for technological innovation can facilitate intelligent transformation, a key question
arises as to whether government financial subsidies can cover the cost of intelligent trans-
formation
[5–8]
. In addition to financial subsidies, the government should take further
measures, such as environmental regimes [
9
,
10
], to facilitate the intelligent transformation
of enterprises.
Sustainability 2021, 13, 13321. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132313321 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
