Research On Driving Mechanism Of Government-enterprise-the Public For Local Environmental Information Disclosure

China has not only enjoyed remarkable economic growth,but faced severe environmental deterioration.In recent years,environmental information disclosure(EID)is of revolutionary policy agenda to facilitate multi-agents participation and combat environmental pollution.In such case,China strives to faciliatate EID and makes significant progresses.Nontheless,the EID in China remains incomplete,distortion,and shows a lack of public participation and feedback.Thus,it is of great importance to identify how to strengthen the environmental responsibility of mulitstakeholders,incuding governments,enterprises and the public,as well as drive the local EID implementation and environmental management.According to the public interest theory,promotion tournament theory,legitimacy management view as well as bounded rationality theory,this paper reveals the multiple logics of environmental behaviors for central government,local governments,enterprises and the public,and then proposes four crucial issues,i.e.,how to facilitate the local governmental EID implementation,corporate EID performing,public participation,and multi-agents collaboration,that needed to be addressed.The methods of econometric panel model,panel regression model,and case study are applied to study these issues.First,this paper focuses on driving mechanisms of EID for local governments.This study analyzes the influence mechanisms of central government,the public,and internal conditions to local governmental EID resulting from the multiple promotion incentives.Using a panel data of 113 Chinese prefectural cities,this study adopts the econometrics models to investigate these issues.The results indicate that EID decreases as the administrative distance increasing,and since 2016,this tendency reduces.Strong financial resource pressure limits the EID enforcement.Local government takes “race to the bottom” and “race to the top” strategies simultaneously in EID implementation,while the intensity of the former is stronger than the latter.Moreover,the results indicate a positive relationship between public environmental demands and EID,however,the “race to bottom” still dominates even local governments facing high public environmental demands.Additionally,the EID is also influenced by the industrial structure and environmental attention of local governments.In sum,this study provides policy implications for building environmental governance system that responsible to the top,to the bottom,and to the internal,as well as guiding local government EID enforcement.Second,this paper explores the response mechanisms to government environmental regulations for enterprises.Governments at different hierarchical levels often have different goals and agenda,which is known as the administration hierarchical distance that reflects the number of bureaucratic levels from the central state to the government agency that ultimately controls and monitors business enterprises.Firms may respond differently to government regulation signals on EID when facing different hierarchical distance.This paper analyzes the influence mechanism of hierarchical distance on EID,and how this mechanism is moderated by corporate ownership type and innovation ability.Using a sample of Chinese publicly listed companies in the highly polluting industries,the results show that a U-shaped relationship between hierarchical distance and EID,and this relationship is flattened for state-owned enterprises and high levels of corporate innovation capability,and the findings carry important policy and managerial implications.Third,this paper probes into the boosting mechanisms for technology-enabled public environmental participation.This study first provides technology-enabled definitions and characteristics,operational logics,and then proposes a framework for discerning drivers of public participation.Based on this framework,using two typical cases in the environmental field,this paper summarizes the technology application contents,as well as simulation characteristics of public participation,reveals the internal mechanisms of technology-enabled public participation,and proposes two driving factors that can activate public participation.This article provides guidance for building a modernized governance system of public environmental participation.Finally,this paper reveals the collaborative driving mechanisms for multi-actor governance.This study defines the local EID collaborative governance,and provides the elements of collaboration governance based on the operational factors of local EID and existing collaborative governance modes.Based on these governance elements and findings of part two,three,and four,this study reveals the formation logics of current practical dilemmas.Moreover,this study offers routes and suggestions to accomplish the goal of multi-agent collaborative governance.This study enlightens the combination of separate interaction mechanism,and improvement of multi-agent collaborative governance.Overall,though building a multiple logics framework,this paper conducts a systematic study on the role and interactions of multi-agents,which creates profound impact as the breakthrough in exploration for theoretical construction and practice guidance for EID implementation.