Environmental Regulation and High-quality Development of Enterprises—Based on the Quasi-natural Experiment of Central Environmental Protection Inspections

As a critical institutional innovation in China’s environmental governance, the central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) has attracted considerable attention regarding its impact on corporate high-quality development and the underlying mechanisms. Drawing upon the creating shared value (CSV) theory, a three-dimensional value evaluation system encompassing economic performance, environmental performance, and social contribution was constructed. A sample of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2012 to 2024 was used, and the policy effects of the CEPI were assessed using a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) model, with its transmission mechanisms being empirically examined. The results indicate that the CEPI exerts a significantly positive effect on corporate high-quality development, confirming the applicability of the Porter Hypothesis in China's institutional context. The core transmission mechanism exhibits a dual pathway: on the one hand, the inspection conveys authoritative signals of environmental compliance, alleviates corporate financing constraints, and consolidates financial support; on the other hand, regulatory pressure propagates vertically along the industrial chain, facilitates collaborative governance within the supply chain, and mitigates the risk of supply-demand mismatches. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the policy effect is more pronounced in firms whose executives lack environmental backgrounds and in those operating in less competitive markets, suggesting that the inspection system yields greater marginal improvements for firms with relatively limited resource endowments. These findings provide theoretical support and empirical evidence for precisely optimizing the design of environmental inspection policies and guiding firms' green transformation in a differentiated manner.