Abstract: R&D investment is the foundation of technological innovation, and innovation is the core competitiveness of an enterprise, which directly affects the benefit and development of an enterprise. Select the panel data of 61 listed companies in the environmental protection industry in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2019 as the research object, this paper use the method of multiple regression analysis to empirically analyze the impact of R&D investment on corporate performance of environmental protection listed companies, and analyze the lag effect of R&D investment. The results show that the intensity of R&D investment has a negative effect on the company?s performance in the current period. It is positively correlated with the return on assets when one period is lagging, and has a positive correlation with the profit rate of the main business when the lag is two periods; while the investment intensity of R&D personnel has a positive effect on the corporate performance in the current period. To promote the high-quality development, enterprises should increase the long-term investment in R&D funds, enhance the innovation capabilities of R&D personnel, and strengthen the transformation of R&D achievements.