Study on the Green Innovation Efficiency of Manufacturing Enterprises under Technological Heterogeneity

In order to reveal the heterogeneity characteristics and internal driving mechanism of green innovation efficiency of Chinese manufacturing enterprises under the "dual carbon" goal, this study breaks through the technical homogeneity assumption of the traditional efficiency evaluation model, and constructs a common frontier SBM-DEA model integrating non-expected output based on the panel data of manufacturing listed companies from 2015 to 2022. The dynamic action path between the technical gap and the management level is identified by the inefficiency decomposition method. The results show that: (1) the average green innovation efficiency of manufacturing enterprises in China is 0.706, with an improvement potential of 29.4%, and the efficiency gradient of low-carbon, medium-carbon, and high-carbon groups decreases, showing a step-by-step decreasing trend of carbon emission intensity and innovation efficiency. (2) The technology gap is the dominant factor in the efficiency loss of the high-carbon group, while the efficiency loss of the low-carbon group is mainly due to management inefficiency. (3) For high-carbon enterprises, strengthening environmental regulation and intellectual property protection will exacerbate their technological catch-up barriers, while industrial upgrading can narrow the frontier gap; In the low- and medium-carbon group, financing constraints inhibit management inefficiency through the backward pressure mechanism, but digital transformation has a negative impact due to resource misallocation, and ESG performance can significantly optimize the management process. This study clarifies the differentiated improvement path of green innovation from the perspective of carbon emission heterogeneity through the common frontier framework, and provides a theoretical basis for formulating collaborative policies for technical support and management intervention.