The influence of industrial robots on firm-level pollution emissions: Evidence from China

Industrial robots are crucial in the production process, but limited literature uncovers the comprehensive channels through which they affect firms' emissions. This paper investigates the influence of industrial robots on firm -level emissions and emissions -intensity. Using comprehensive firm -level SO2 emissions and robot import data in China during 2000-2013, we find that the robot -adoption manifests a negative effect on both firm -level emissions and emissions -intensity. Meanwhile, this reduction effect exhibits an increasing dynamic effect. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis indicates that improving abatement efficiency, increasing the share of intermediate inputs, and reducing SO2 generations per output contribute 43.25%, 22.81%, and 17.54%, respectively to the reduction effect. Finally, the counterfactual analysis implies that shutting off the abatement efficiency, share of intermediate inputs, and SO2 generation channels, will lower the reduction effect of robots on emissions by 4.83%, 2.85% and 1.96%, respectively.