Coal mining firms in the bottleneck period of development are attempting to promote the transformation and upgrading with the strategy of technological innovation. Using a sample of coal mining firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges in China from 2016 to 2022. The paper empirically investigates the relationship between environmental regulation (ER) and technological innovation (TI), and further tests the moderating effect of media attention (MA). We find that there is a U-shaped relationship between economic environmental regulation (EER) and the input capability of TI, with a single threshold effect. The same is true of relationship between EER and the output capability of TI. We also find that there is a U-shaped relationship between administrative environmental regulation (AER) and the transformation capability of TI, with double threshold effect. Additionally, MA strengthens the relationship between ER and TI, especially for negative MA, which confirms that media reports on environmental pollution can play a role in curbing environmental pollution. Our conclusions not only give a tentative theoretical analysis with regard to the relationship between ER and TI, but also provides a useful reference for the reform and development of coal mining industry.
Cui et al. (2026) studied this question.