The Impact Of Environmental Information Disclosure On Corporate Debt Financing Costs

With the leapfrog development of China’s economy,the total economic output has steadily ranked second in the world.However,the development mode of high pollution and high consumption has made the resource and environmental situation increasingly severe.Therefore,China has issued a series of environmental protection policies,requiring enterprises to clarify their social and environmental responsibilities,disclose environmental information on time,improve environmental protection facilities,improve environmental governance,and achieve green transformation.Environmental information disclosure has gradually become an important way for enterprises to demonstrate their social obligations to the public and establish their corporate image.In recent years,financial institutions have implemented green credit policies,taking corporate environmental governance as an important assessment standard for credit approval.The relationship between environmental information disclosure and corporate debt financing costs is becoming increasingly close.At the same time,creditors will focus on examining the debt default risk of enterprises when determining their loan interest rates.However,few scholars have studied the role of debt default risk in the relationship between environmental information disclosure and corporate debt financing costs.In addition,as an external regulatory tool,media can timely disseminate various types of information and affect the business management behavior of enterprises.Therefore,the impact of media attention on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and debt financing costs is also worth in-depth discussion.In the context of green finance,based on stakeholder theory,information asymmetry theory,signal transmission theory,sustainable development theory,and soft budget constraint theory,this paper empirically studies the overall environmental information disclosure level of enterprises and the impact of segmented hard and soft disclosure information on debt financing costs using Stata software,using listed companies in heavy pollution industries in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares from 2014 to 2021 as a sample;Further analyzing the mechanism of debt default risk on environmental information disclosure and corporate debt financing costs,as well as the regulatory role of media attention;In addition,the heterogeneity of the degree of marketization and the nature of property rights is discussed in depth.The research finds that:(1)The higher the quality of environmental information disclosure by heavily polluting enterprises,the lower their debt financing costs.Compared to soft disclosure information,hard disclosure information has a more significant inhibitory effect on debt financing costs;(2)Debt default risk plays a mediating role in the relationship between environmental information disclosure and debt financing costs;(3)Media attention will inhibit the negative impact of environmental information disclosure on debt financing costs;(4)The impact of environmental information disclosure on corporate debt financing costs is more significant among enterprises in regions with high degree of marketization;(5)Compared with state-owned enterprises,the impact of environmental information disclosure on debt financing costs is more significant in the sample of non state-owned enterprises.Based on the conclusions of this study,the following suggestions are proposed from four perspectives:the government should actively improve the environmental information disclosure system,broaden the subject and content of environmental information disclosure,urge financial institutions to implement green credit policies,actively carry out environmental information auditing,and force enterprises to improve the quality of environmental information disclosure;Enterprises should clarify their environmental protection responsibilities,improve their awareness of environmental information disclosure,and improve the content of environmental information disclosure;When making credit decisions,creditors should establish a green development concept,reasonably assess enterprise environmental risks,and improve the allocation efficiency of credit resources;The media should truthfully report enterprise information and strengthen public opinion supervision over enterprises.