Accounting Information Transparency, Environmental Protection Concern And Green Innovation Of Heavily Polluting Enterprises

With environmental issues becoming a major threat to human survival,how to promote economic development while improving the environmental issues of extensive development has become an important issue.As the main body of micro-economy,heavy polluting enterprises are faced with multiple dilemmas of social pressure,environmental risk.Green innovation is considered to be an important strategic support for achieving sustainable development goals,and has increasingly becomes the focus of attention for enterprises and their relevant stakeholders.Subject to the high-input and high-risk characteristics of green innovation,previous studies believe that institution pressure is the main driving force of green innovation.However,institution factors do not have explanatory power for the heterogeneity of corporate green innovation under the same institution;in addition,the compensation for green innovation is often limited to the upper limit of administrative penalties.Therefore,seeking for the factors other than environmental regulation is of great significance for clarifying the current practice,stimulating the vitality of green innovation,and promoting sustainable economic growth and achieving the goal of carbon neutrality.On the issue of green innovation,the factors of macro institution have been fully discussed,and more and more scholars have begun to pay attention to factors about governance mechanism and enterprise characteristics.Among them,information asymmetry is an important logical clue,which runs through the discussion of enterprise and external resource interaction and internal agency relationship.As an important indicator of the effectiveness of reflecting and obtaining real information,accounting information transparency plays an important role in improving internal governance and external market performance.On the one hand,accounting information transparency reduces external information asymmetry and decreases the financing cost of heavily polluting enterprises to obtain funds that can be used for green innovation;On the other hand,accounting information transparency plays a role as an internal alternative contract mechanism,helping to encourage and supervise managers to make green innovation.However,improving the transparency of accounting information may bring about side effects of information leakage and weaken the tendency of enterprises to green innovation.Therefore,can accounting information transparency improve green innovation performance of enterprises?Are they affected by and what external factors?And what are the channels?This is a scientific question worth exploring,and no research has yet provided a direct answer.In response to the above issues,based on information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory,and institutional theory,this article empirically examines the role of accounting information transparency in promoting green innovation by using heavily polluting listed companies in China from 2011 to 2020 as research samples,and further explores the impact channels of accounting information transparency,the role of environmental concerns,the impact of heterogeneity characteristics,and economic consequences.The research conclusions show that:First,accounting information transparency has a significant positive impact on the improvement of green innovation performance of heavily polluting enterprises,and has a consistent promotion effect on invention patents and non-invention patents.Second,the moderating effect of environmental concerns shows that environmental concerns from both the government and the public can positively influence the above relationship.Third,the research on the influence channel shows that the transparency of accounting information mainly plays a role through two channels:enhancing external resource acquisition and internal investment.The improvement of accounting information transparency brings about the reduction of financing costs,replaces the role of supervision and tolerance contract mechanism to a certain extent,thereby improving the green innovation.Fourth,the impact of accounting information transparency has heterogeneous characteristics:in the subdivision channel,accounting information transparency mainly improves the trade credit financing,and the role of accounting information transparency has heterogeneous performance in enterprises with different executive characteristics.Fifth,in terms of economic consequences,accounting information transparency not only positively affects the performance of green innovation,but also significantly improves the technical quality of green innovation,the economic value and environmental performance of enterprises.In order to ensure the reliability of the research results,this study uses endogenous and robustness test methods such as instrumental variables and replacement of key variable measures,and the research conclusions remain unchanged.The theoretical and practical contributions include:First,the impact of accounting information transparency on mitigating the "resource" and "investment" barriers to green innovation in heavily polluting enterprises was examined from the perspective of information mechanisms,and the extension of relevant theories was expanded.It helps to understand the problem of green innovation in the real world and form an understanding and response to the question of "what promotes or protects corporate green innovation".Second,incorporating external institutional factors into the research framework and analyzing the regulatory and environmental effects of the "formal institution" of government environmental concerns and the "informal institution" of public environmental concerns.which is conducive to understanding the positive factors of enterprises in green practice from both the government and the public levels.The research conclusion indicates that information transparency and green supervision environment have a beneficial impact on the sustainable development of enterprises;The importance of constructing a multidimensional environmental governance system about government-public-enterprise was emphasized.Third,it enriches the heterogeneity of the impact of accounting information transparency.From the perspective of support sources and the characteristics of corporate governance,it is necessary to further optimize the external economic environment and executive decision-making mechanism.Fourth,this study further analyzes the economic consequences of accounting information transparency affecting green innovation,and provides evidences of its positive practical significance from the three dimensions of technological,economic,and environmental value.In addition,this study also promotes the integration of information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory and institutional theory,and promotes the development of related research.