Abstract:

In recent years， under the guidance of enterprises' “going global” strategy and the “Belt and Road” Initiative， the scale of Chinese enterprises' foreign direct investment （OFDI） has been growing year by year. However， in the face of the complex international investment environment， Chinese enterprises are still facing huge potential risks in the process of “going global”. Due to the lack of investment experience and in-depth investigation of the host country market， many enterprises often fail to acquire， invest in limited， or even end up in failure. Therefore， under the theoretical framework of heterogeneous enterprise， exploring the relationship between firm risk level and investment location choice can help enterprises actively cope with the opportunities and challenges of globalization， and point out the direction for further improving OFDI quality and optimizing investment structure.The existing literature on the location choice of China's OFDI is rich， but most of the empirical analysis is based on the flow or stock data of China's OFDI at the macro level， while relatively few literatures examine the impact of heterogeneity characteristics on OFDI location choice at the firm level. On ROA and enterprise of foreign direct investment research， scholars usually is the host country factors influence on enterprise foreign direct investment risk， and ROA as proxy variable of enterprise risk level， but there is no literature to investigate the factors from the perspective of business risk level heterogeneity influence on our country enterprise of foreign direct investment location choice. In view of the current turbulent and risk-prone international economic environment， the enterprise risk level is defined based on the uncertainty of future capital inflow， and this index is introduced into the extended enterprise heterogeneity OFDI location choice model， focusing on how the internal risk characteristics of OFDI enterprises affect their international expansion decisions. It may be innovative in the perspective of topic selection and research content.Specifically， under the framework of heterogeneous enterprise theory， a theoretical model of the influence of firm risk level on the location choice of OFDI is constructed， and the influencing mechanism of firm risk level， host country market size， natural resources， strategic assets， institutional quality and other factors on OFDI decision-making is revealled. On this basis， the enterprise micro data set is constructed by matching the List of Overseas Investment Enterprises （institutions） of the Ministry of Commerce of China and the data of A-share listed enterprises， and the conditional Logit model is used for empirical test. The results show that the relationship between the enterprise risk level and the entry threshold of the host country determines the OFDI decision of the enterprise. The deterioration of the market environment of the host country will increase the entry threshold and weaken the investment tendency of the enterprise， but the low risk level of the enterprise can improve its investment probability. On the whole， Chinese enterprises tend to invest in host countries with larger market size， abundant natural resources， close geographical distance， convenience of access and higher institutional quality. Low enterprise risk level weakens the negative influence of host country factors such as market size， geographical distance and institutional quality on location decision， but strengthens the influence of access convenience of host country. However， the high risk level strengthens the negative impact of host country factors except entry convenience， making enterprises more inclined to countries with lower entry barriers.

Key words: enterprise risk, OFDI, location selection, heterogeneous enterprise