Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Growth, and Energy Policy in China

China’s economy steps into the “new normal” phase, as it is growing in an innovation-driven instead of a factor-driven mode. In this paper, we constructed the corporate behavioral decision models in different scenarios of policy and analyzed the effect of energy policies on corporate behavior and societal welfare, in a duopoly market. The following conclusions were derived. (1) In a duopoly, the product pricing is irrelevant to the resource cost in their production process. (2) For the firm undertaking the social responsibility, the energy tax imposed by the government would increase either the production or the profit, but decrease the consumer surplus. In contrast, for the other firms, the energy tax rate is opposite to their profit. (3) Low-energy-consuming products will promote efficiency, which reduces either the price or the marginal cost, resulting in a more conspicuous cost advantage to the firm adopting the ecological innovation. (4) The marginal cost for a low-energy-consuming technology research and development steadily decreases, which turns their short-term financial disadvantages into the long-term competitive advantages. The marginal contribution of this paper was to build a simultaneously moving model, in duopoly market, and provide theoretical evidence to endogenize the firm strategy to undertake social responsibilities and to realize sustainable growth.