Abstract: In the context of the rapid growth of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) while at the same time faced with the constraining force of strict environmental regulations set by developed countries, the influence of the environmental regulation intensity brought about by host countries represented by the United States on China’s strategy of investment location choice is worth close watching. Taking China’s direct investment stock across 44 states and in 14 industries in USA over the period from 2008 to 2015 as the samples, this paper analyses the impact and mechanism of US environmental regulation intensity on China’s investment scale and location by the fixed effect and threshold regression models. The empirical results prove that, in general, the increase of environment regulation intensity in any US state can significantly restrain the inflow of China’s capital, especially in the pollution-intensive industries. Meanwhile, regional economic development level, human capital and technology level all have double threshold values, and environmental regulations intensity has a non-linear impact on China’s direct investment.

Key words: environmental regulations intensity; China’s OFDI in the United States; location choice; threshold effect