Analysts’ Attention,Executive Incentives And Corporate Environmental Performance

The report on the Work of the Government in 2022 focused on "Improving policies to support the environmental protection industry,such as energy saving and water saving and recycling waste materials.The Party’s 20 th National Congress further proposed"Accelerating the green transformation of the development mode" and "Deepening the prevention and control of environmental pollution",which pointed out the fundamental direction for the development of ecological and environmental protection industry.As the external supervision and governance mechanism of enterprises,the team of securities analysts is growing,and they are more and more active in fulfilling their social responsibilities and playing the role of industry think tank.Strengthening the supervision of enterprises by the external governance mechanism of analysts,encouraging and guiding enterprises to improve their environmental performance and actively assume environmental responsibilities,and attracting more stakeholders to participate in the social co-governance of environmental pollution are of great significance to the realization of Chinese-style modernization featuring harmonious coexistence between man and nature.Based on this,this paper intends to explore whether analysts,as an external supervision and governance mechanism,have a positive impact on corporate environmental performance.This paper takes Shanghai-Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2021 as samples to explore the supervision and governance effect of analysts’ attention on corporate environmental performance.The results show that the supervision and governance mechanism concerned by analysts plays a positive role in corporate environmental governance.By giving full play to the effect of external supervision,the analysts make up for the deficiency of internal supervision and avoid the environmental opportunism of the executives who hold shares,which is not conducive to the environmental performance of the enterprises.At the same time,stickiness of executive compensation can effectively reduce the concerns of management in making decisions on environmental behavior,so that senior executives actively cater to the supervision of analysts to obtain the recognition of environmental legitimacy,and strengthen the supervision effect of analysts’ attention on corporate environmental performance.Further analysis shows that analysts attention plays a more significant role in improving corporate environmental performance in heavily polluting industries.Government environmental subsidies significantly moderated the monitoring effect of analysts’ attention on corporate environmental performance.Companies with lower audit quality are more likely to improve their environmental performance when faced with the supervision of analysts.In other words,analysts can,to some extent,replace the supervision role of auditors in environmental governance.The intermediary test found that the attention of analysts can improve the level of environmental performance of enterprises by reducing the short-sighted behavior of managers and improving the level of internal control and governance.In order to enhance the credibility of the conclusion,a series of robustness tests are also carried out.Based on the background of green and high-quality development,this paper expands the research perspective in related fields by linking analyst concern behavior with corporate environmental performance.Firstly,it provides empirical support for improving the supervision system of capital market and guaranteeing the independence and objectivity of analysts,reference for enterprises to formulate appropriate executive incentive policies and optimize internal governance mechanism from the perspective of salary structure and stickiness.Secondly,it provides reference for enterprises to formulate appropriate executive incentive policies and optimize internal governance mechanism from the perspective of salary structure and stickiness.Finally,it provides inspiration for promoting the cogovernance mechanism of capital market and enterprise environment.