The impact mechanism of environmental regulation and sustainable finance on green development of China’s A-share listed port enterprises

Exploring the impact of environmental regulation, sustainable finance and the synergistic development of the two on green development of port enterprises is of great significance for China to the realize “dual-carbon” goal. Based on the mutual validation of system evolution theory and econometric models, a three-party evolutionary game model including government, financial institutions and port enterprises is constructed to simulate and analyze the impact of environmental regulation, sustainable finance and the synergistic development of the two on the green development of port enterprises from the perspective of the micro-subject behavior. Then based on the data from 16 China’s A-share listed port enterprises from 2011 to 2022, a dynamic panel model is employed to verify the findings of the game analysis and to conduct a heterogeneity analysis. Research results show that: (1) Environmental regulation and sustainable finance are all conducive to promoting the green development of China’s A-share listed port enterprises, and the role of environmental regulation is more prominent. (2) The promotion of the synergistic development of environmental regulation and sustainable finance is insufficient in empirical analysis, and fails to reach the desired high level as in game analysis. (3) The driving effects of environmental regulation, sustainable finance, and the synergy of the two are more significant for the China’s A-share listed port enterprises whose property right is state-run and whose geographic location is in the Yangtze River Delta.