Environmental risk management and innovation: The impact of patent insurance pilots on clean technology development

Green transformation has become a global consensus, promoting green technology innovation of heavy polluting enterprises has become a key issue to promote sustainable development. We take implementation of patent insurance pilot policy as an exogenous shock, and constructs a multi-period double difference model based on the data of A-share listed companies in the heavy pollution industry from 2008 to 2023 to empirically test impact of patent insurance pilot on enterprises' green technology innovation. The findings show that the patent insurance pilot significantly enhance green technology innovation level of heavy pollution enterprises. Mechanism test shows that patent insurance can effectively drive growth of green technology innovation by alleviating R&D uncertainty, stimulating R&D activity and deepening industry-university-research cooperation. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that promotion effect of patent insurance on green technology innovation is more significant in enterprises with lower financing constraints, weaker competition in the industry, and located in non-resource-oriented cities. We expand research perspectives on application of intellectual property protection tools in the field of green technology innovation, and deepens theoretical and practical understanding of policy intervention mechanisms in the context of green transformation.