Empirical Study Of Heavily Polluting Industries Environmental Disclosure And Corporate Financial Performance

With the rapid development of the global economy, the ecological environment hasbeen severely damaged. Enterprise is undoubtedly the culprit causing environmentaldegradation, but it is also the key to solving the problem. So research on the field ofenvironmental management is critical to the development of environmental protectionand low-carbon economy. Corporate environment information disclosure is an importantchannel for corporate environmental management status. The paper aims to identifyinfluencing factors of corporate environmental disclosure and explore the relationshipbetween corporate environmental disclosure and corporate financial performance by theenvironmental information corporate disclosed.The paper is structured as two main parts, the theoretical analysis section and theempirical testing part. In the theoretical analysis section, we reviewed the past studiesabout the scale of corporate assets, financial leverage, the nature of corporate equityinfluencing factors of environmental information disclosure and the role environmentalinformation disclosure. Then we build a theoretical framework for environmentaldisclosure including sustainable development theory, signaling theory, external pressuretheory and stakeholder theory. Then we elaborated several features, including the size ofthe company’s assets, revenue growth, the number of independent directors of the boardof proportion, financial leverage, and the nature of corporate equity. By which toidentify influencing factors of corporate environmental disclosure and analyze thepossible impact of corporate environmental disclosure on corporate financialperformance, afterwards put forward the theoretical assumptions of the paper.In the empirical testing part, we mainly test the theoretical assumptions above bythe method of empirical study. We find that there is a significant positive correlationbetween enterprise scale,whether to set environmental protection departments orsimilar institutions, the proportion of the number of independent directors of the boardof directors, financial leverage, the nature of enterprise equity and level of corporateenvironmental disclosure. Corporate profitability, the numbers of independent directorswho have environmental expertise have positive effect on corporate environmentaldisclosure. However there is a negative correlation between financial leverage and thelevel of environmental information disclosure. The growth stage, area, the departmentof environmental protection, ownership concentration, the corporate values has impacton the disclosure of environmental information. When we test the relationship betweenthe disclosures of environmental information and revenue growth, we found that the level of disclosure of environmental information has a negative effect on the latercorporate financial performance. In the testing part, the level of environmentalprotection with financial performance with important influence. The moreEnvironmental information disclosure, the more of the industries of value and rate ofReturn on common stockholders’ Equity.