This paper explores how different types of environmental regulations affect firm performance. Inspired by the Porter hypothesis, we propose a theoretical framework for distinguishing the heterogeneity of different types of environmental regulations. By focusing on technology-intensive manufacturers, this study analyzes a sample of 333 firms between 2008 and 2015 with a total of 2664 panel sample data observations. We find that both industrial environmental regulations and regional environmental regulations significantly affect firm performance, but their effects on firm performance are different. Regional environmental regulations are negatively related to firm performance, which is inconsistent with Porter’s hypothesis. However, industrial environmental regulations and firm performance present an inverted U-shaped relationship, which is consistent with Porter’s hypothesis. Industrial environmental regulations positively contribute to the progress of a firm’s technological innovation up to a certain point, making a positive contribution to the improvement of firm financial performance. Beyond that, the bounded rationality of a certain threshold will considerably increase the cost for the firm to meet industry supervision. This makes the innovation compensation effect brought about by industrial environmental regulations unable to offset the attendant costs, which will significantly negatively affect firm performance. In addition, industrial environmental regulations and regional environmental regulations significantly interact with each other. A high degree of industrial environmental regulation will make the negative impact of regional environmental regulation on firm performance steeper. Lastly, we find that the level of regional economic development significantly affects the inverted U-shaped relationship between industrial environmental regulations and firm performance: A high level of regional economic development will make the inverted U-shaped relationship between industrial environmental regulations and corporate performance steeper.