Do public environmental concerns promote new energy enterprises' development? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment
利用2011年中国PM2.5激增事件作为准自然实验，发现公众环境关注提升后，严重污染地区新能源企业的市场势力比轻度污染地区高108%，且该效应在非国企、无政治关联企业及无补贴地区更显著。
We examine whether the public environmental concerns promote the development of new energy enterprises through a quasi-experiment China's extreme event of 2011 when the PM2.5 Surge incident escalated public environmental concerns. After this incident, the market power of new energy enterprises in severely polluted regions became 108% higher than that in the mildly polluted regions. It implies that public environmental concerns promote the development of new energy enterprises. This observation is limited to non-state-owned companies, companies without political connections, and regions without new energy subsidies. This increased market power of new energy enterprises with increasing public environmental concerns was because of sales increase instead of reduced non-operational costs. Overall, this study answers several interesting questions associated with the increasing public environmental concerns and the rapid development of energy enterprises.