Abstract:     Nowadays, environmental pollution in China is serious, and heavy polluting companies have made terrible contributions. It is urgent to carry out green technological innovation with the new development concept of high-quality economic development. However, due to the unique characteristics of green technology innovation such as long cycle, high risk, and large investment, enterprises lack the passion and motivation for innovation and are prone to act free-riding. In this case, the "visible hand" of the government is needed to play an important role. Can heterogeneous environmental policies with multiple measures really promote enterprises green technology innovation? What are the different impact mechanisms and path of different environmental policies on green technology innovation? As the main body of innovative decision-making, what role do the characteristics of executives (especially executive risk preferences) play? Existing in-depth research needs to be empirically tested.
     This paper focuses on the two dimensions of environmental policies and the characteristics of executives, we take China′s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share heavy polluting listed companies from 2013 to 2018 as a sample, and use Stata 15.1 to empirically test the similarities and differences how the incentive and punitive environmental policies affect enterprises green technology innovation, and the mechanism of executive risk preferences among three variables. 
    The research finds that: (1) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between incentive environmental policies and green technology innovation. The reason is that moderate government subsidies can disperse innovation risks, while their marginal utility shows a downward trend as subsidies increase, and high subsidies will eliminate the innovation motivation. (2) There is an U-shaped relationship between punitive environmental policies and green technology innovation. According to the designing principle of Pigouvian taxes, only when sewage charges higher than the cost of enterprises pollution control can punitive environmental policies promote enterprises green technology innovation. (3) The executive risk preferences can promote green technology innovation, because executives with high-risk preferences are more willing to take risks and are more willing to carry out green technology innovation activities. Executives with low-risk preferences are unwilling to develop new projects and implement green technology innovation projects with slow feedback and unclear benefits. (4) The executive risk preferences positively regulate the relationship between environmental policies and green technology innovation. The reason is that executives with high-risk preferences can still actively carry out green technology innovation activities even when the incentive policies are at low level; when the punishment is high, executives with high-risk preferences regard external challenges as opportunities, behaviors are more aggressive, and the level of green technology innovation will be improved.
    The results of the research show that it is necessary to integrate organically external environmental policies with the risk preferences of internal executives to promote heavy polluting enterprises to carry out green technology innovation activities. Government departments should start from multiple perspectives of environmental policies, and appropriately match and orderly launch heterogeneous environmental policies; enterprises should appropriately improve the adventurous and innovative spirit of senior management, and improve the risk tolerance of green technology innovation. The above are beneficial to promote the green technology innovation of heavy polluting enterprises and to drive high-quality development.

Key words:  incentive environmental policy, punitive environmental policy, executive risk preference, green technology innovation