Abstract To meet consumer expectations for greener and better quality products and to ensure effective compliance with emissions regulations, firms have begun investing in improving the quality and greenness (low carbon level) of existing products. Emissions regulations currently restrict carbon emissions from product manufacturing rather than the emissions from the use of sold products. However, a large amount of carbon may be emitted from the use of products. Motivated by these issues, we analytically investigate the impact of environmental concern and the policies of regulators, and consumer environmental concern on product introduction. Our results show that (i) whether emissions trading regulations benefit firms depends on the quality improvement capability, and the interaction between emissions price and allowed emissions cap; (ii) the environmental concern of consumers helps firms obtain higher profits when quality improvement capability is relatively high, and always benefits environmental performance; and (iii) relatively low environmental concern set by regulators is detrimental to the maximization of social welfare, whereas high regulator environmental concern helps to maximize social welfare but at the expense of reducing firms’ profits.

中文翻译：

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监管干预和消费者环境关注对产品引进的影响

摘要 为了满足消费者对更环保、更优质产品的期望，并确保有效遵守排放法规，企业已开始投资提高现有产品的质量和绿色（低碳水平）。排放法规目前限制来自产品制造的碳排放，而不是来自使用销售产品的排放。然而，产品的使用可能会排放大量的碳。受这些问题的启发，我们分析了环境问题和监管机构政策的影响，以及消费者环境问题对产品推出的影响。我们的研究结果表明：（i）排放交易法规是否有利于企业取决于质量改进能力，以及排放价格与允许排放上限之间的相互作用；(ii) 消费者的环境关注有助于企业在质量改进能力较高时获得更高的利润，并始终有利于环境绩效；(iii) 监管者设定的相对较低的环境关注不利于社会福利的最大化，而高度监管的环境关注有助于最大化社会福利，但以降低企业利润为代价。