Environmental Regulation Configurations and Manufacturing Industrial Chain Resilience: The Differentiated Role of Green Technological Innovation in China

Building resilient manufacturing industrial chains while advancing low-carbon transformation is an important issue for sustainable development. This study examines the relationships among configurations of command-and-control, market-incentive, voluntary, and implicit environmental regulation, green technological innovation, and manufacturing industrial chain resilience across 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China. We combine fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis with a complex mediation model. The former identifies environmental regulation configurations associated with high green technological innovation, while the latter examines their relationships with manufacturing industrial chain resilience and the mediating role of green technological innovation. Resilience is measured from the dimensions of entity resilience and structural resilience. The results show that no single type of environmental regulation is necessary for high green technological innovation. Three configurations are identified: the “government–enterprise-driven,” “enterprise–society synergistic,” and “policy–society co-promotion” configurations. Among them, the first two are significantly and positively associated with manufacturing industrial chain resilience, with green technological innovation partially mediating both relationships. When voluntary environmental regulation is a core present condition in both configurations, the mediating role of green technological innovation is more pronounced in the government–enterprise-driven configuration. The findings indicate that coordinating multiple forms of environmental regulation is important for promoting green technological innovation and strengthening manufacturing industrial chain resilience.