Policy Uncertainty And Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility

In recent years,environmental pollution,resource shortages,and ecological environment deterioration are major restricted factor for social and economic development.The environmental issues and corporate social responsibility have attracted increasingly attention,and environmental protection is one of the important tasks of the government at present.However,over the past few decades,it has been implemented based on GDP in the official assessing system,which support the rapid development of economy.Due to the pursuit of political promotion incentive based on economic growth,local officials have developed the economy at the cost of the natural environment.With the establishment of the environmental assessment system,the environmental performance has become the primary consideration for the promotion of officials.Many scholars and previous studies discussed the effects of political factors on local economic development and the corporate social responsibility.However,besides political connections factors,questions as whether the regional policy uncertainty can influence the corporate environmental social responsibility,are seldom involved in the exist research.Therefore,this article attempts to construct theoretical framework of a system,from two aspects contained official turnover and anti-corruption to explore the effect of regional policy uncertainty on corporate environmental social responsibility,in order to understand the inherent logic of their behavior.First,from the perspective of regional policy uncertainty caused by anti-corruption,this paper discusses the impact of anti-corruption on firms' environmental performance,based on a quasi-experiment of the anti-corruption activity since 2012 in China.The study finds:(1)the environmental performance would improve with fall of officials.(2)after a further examination,the different administrative levels of the fall of officials would have the same impacts on the environmental performance.(3)after analyzing the effect mechanism,this paper finds that it mainly because of the environmental governance investment,the strengthens of supervision,the CSR,and the firms' political connection.(4)Further study finds that this effect would be influenced by firms' characteristics and regional institutional factors.Second,from the perspective of regional policy uncertainty caused by official turnover,this paper selects the local government transition(the replacement of municipal party secretary)as a new angle of view and empirically discusses its influence on corporate environmental performance.The study finds:(1)the environmental performance would improve when regional policy uncertainty caused by the replacements of the officials occurred and the new official was from a same city;meanwhile the corporate environmental performance would worsen when the new official was from a different city.(2)after analyzing the effect mechanism,this paper finds that it mainly because of promotion incentive of the new official from a different city,and regional favoritism of the new official was from a same city.(3)Further study finds that this effect would be influenced by firms' characteristics and regional institutional factors.Third,from the perspective of regional policy uncertainty caused by anti-corruption,this paper discusses the impact of anti-corruption on firms' environmental disclosure,based on a quasi-experiment of the anti-corruption activity since 2012 in China.The study finds:(1)the environmental disclosure quality would decrease with fall of officials.(2)after a further examination,the different administrative levels of the fall of officials would have the same impacts on the environmental disclosure.(3)after analyzing the effect mechanism,this paper finds that it mainly because of the environmental governance investment,the strengthens of supervision.(4)Further study finds that this effect would be influenced by firms' characteristics and regional institutional factors.Finally,from the perspective of regional policy uncertainty caused by official turnover,this paper selects the local government transition(the replacement of municipal party secretary)as a new angle of view and empirically discusses its influence on corporate environmental disclosure.The study finds:(1)the corporate environmental disclosure would decrease when regional policy uncertainty caused by the replacements of the officials occurred.(2)after a further examination,this effect would be more obvious when regional policy uncertainty caused by the replacements of the officials occurred and the new official was from a different city;meanwhile the corporate environmental disclosure would have this effect when the new official was from a same city.(3)after analyzing the effect mechanism,this paper finds that it mainly because of promotion incentive of the new official from a different city.(4)Further study finds that this effect would be influenced by firms' characteristics and regional institutional factors.This study provides not only a new idea to understand corporate environmental social responsibility inherent logic,but also from a new perspective of regional policy uncertainty to provide useful information in improving the green performance evaluation standards and systems,and to find a theoretical basis for China to deepen reform to improve the mechanisms and institution-building,and achieve economic and social sustainable development.