Improved Government Environmental Information Disclosure Favors the Effectiveness of Environmental Governance
This study leverages the implementation of the"Environmental Air Quality Standards",designed to augment environmental information transparency,as a quasi-natural experiment.The research draws upon the pool of publicly listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges spanning from 2010 to 2020 as the focal sample and employs a multiple difference model to empirically scrutinize the impact of macro-level regional environmental information disclosure on micro-level corporate environmental governance.The findings of this study are as follows:First,the study reveals that an increase in governmental pressure for firms to disclose environmental information serves as an incentive for companies to adopt environmental governance measures,consequently leading to a reduction in corporate pollutant emissions.The empirical model employed in this study satisfies the parallel trend assumption,justifying the use of a difference-in-differences model for empirical testing.Furthermore,the placebo test method is applied to confirm the non-randomness of the research findings.Additionally,instrumental variable methods,Heckman models,and PSM-DID techniques are utilized to address potential endogeneity concerns,while robustness tests support the reliability of the primary regression results.Second,mechanism analysis illustrates that government-mandated environmental information disclosure enhances corporate environmental governance through two channels:strengthening regional environmental law enforcement constraints and reinforcing public environmental supervision.Third,the effectiveness of government environmental information disclosure in promoting governance is shown to be weakened in regions facing significant fiscal pressure but strengthened when firms receive government environmental subsidies.Lastly,further investigation indicates that firms'response to government environmental information disclosure constraints significantly enhances their innovation capacity,quality,operational efficiency,and financial performance,ultimately achieving a"win-win"outcome.In conclusion,this study enriches and expands the theoretical research in the field of institutional economics,particularly concerning macropolicies and micro-level firm behavior.It provides valuable insights that support the institutional foundations hypothesis proposed by Acemoglu et al.(2005)and offers beneficial references for stimulating firms'enthusiasm towards environmental governance and facilitating the transition to a green,low-carbon,and efficient development model.
environmental information disclosureenvironmental governancehigh-quality economic developmentmultiple difference model
万方数据
维普
