Environmental Environmental Regulation Pressure and Green Innovation Bubbles: Resource Channels and the Amplifying Role of Artificial Intelligence

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Environmental regulation may expand visible green-innovation inputs without proportionate contemporaneous patent output. We examine a supplied residual measure of this input–output mismatch in a matched sample of 27,157 observations on 4560 Chinese A-share listed firms from 2014 to 2022. In the industry- and year-adjusted specification, regulatory pressure is positively associated with the residual (0.031, firm-clustered p<0.001). Complete mediation equations identify the WW financing index and environmental investment as exploratory resource channels. Conditional effects of regulatory pressure are positive across the reported AI-disclosure distribution. The magnitude is modest: a one-standard-deviation increase in regulatory pressure corresponds to approximately 0.0066 outcome units, or 0.039 standard deviations. The evidence documents systematic cross-firm covariation and motivates closer attention to input–output conversion. Firm fixed-effects sensitivity and the contemporaneous construction limit within-firm and causal interpretation; future research should validate the construct using forward patent output, patent quality, and physical environmental performance.