Towards Sustainable Development: Investigating the Heterogeneity and Driving Factors of Green Total Factor Productivity in Coal Enterprises

Understanding the heterogeneity and driving factors of green total factor productivity (GTFP) in coal enterprises can provide guidance for policy design regarding the sustainable development of coal in the future. In contrast to previous research at the macro level, we adopt and extend the data envelopment analysis method to measure and quantitatively decompose the GTFP of coal enterprises, examine inter-enterprise heterogeneity at multiple levels, explain the effects of the key driving factors and moderating factors of GTFP in theory, and subsequently conduct empirical testing using data obtained from 639 coal enterprises in China. The results indicate that there is significant inter-enterprise heterogeneity in GTFP in terms of enterprise scale, enterprise growth stage, government-enterprise collusion (GEC), and regional differences. The enterprise scale and enterprise growth stage have significantly positive effects on GTFP, while GEC has a significantly negative effect on GTFP. Technological progress, scale efficiency, and pure technical efficiency have moderating effects on enterprise scale, enterprise growth stage, and GEC. The results have valuable policy implications; it is necessary for the government to allocate significant resources towards thoroughly examining the potential effects arising from the heterogeneity of GTFP among coal enterprises, to weaken control over the aggregate target, and to strengthen the use of market-oriented policy instruments.