Does environmental regulations promote the green transformation of high polluters?

In light of the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law (the EPT Law) in China on 1 January 2018, this paper employs the difference-in-difference model (DID) to empirically investigates how the environmental regulations affects the green transformation of highly polluting firms. The results indicate that the EPT Law has significantly aided in the green transformation of highly polluting firms, with the increasing pressure of environmental legality acting as a partial mediating effect. This paper adds to the research on the economic effects of the environmental regulations and provides new evidence to support the incentive perspective on environmental regulations.