Study On Driving Mechanism Of Corporate Environmental Responsibility Fulfillment

Climate change and environmental degradation have led the Chinese government to elevate ecological and environmental governance to an unprecedented strategic level.General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at the National Conference on Ecological Environmental Protection that “the ecological environment is a major political issue related to the Party’s mission and purpose,and it is also a major social issue related to people’s livelihood.” The CPC Central Committee put forward the strategic goal of“achieving carbon peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060”,which means that China will unswervingly carry out pollution reduction and carbon reduction actions,and take the road of high-quality development featuring ecological priority,low carbon and green development.As the main body of microeconomic activities,firms are not only the main force of economic development,but also the requisition of environmental resources,so they need to undertake the dual tasks of economic growth and environmental protection.However,due to the externality of the ecological environmental,firms tend to evade environmental responsibilities under the constraint of taking profit as the main goal.In the long run,the environmental carrying capacity approaches the limit.Therefore,how to promote firms to fulfill environmental responsibilities has become a major proposition in the process of contemporary China’s social and economic development.In view of this,based on the objective evaluation of the level of corporate environmental responsibility performance,this paper systematically studies the driving mechanism of corporate environmental responsibility performance,provides corresponding policy suggestions for improving corporate environmental responsibility performance,and provides theoretical and empirical reference for accelerating the construction of ecological civilization.This paper is carried out according to the technical route of “theoretical analysis-level evaluation-mechanism test-policy suggestion”.Focusing on corporate environmental responsibility,an evaluation index system is built to measure the level of corporate environmental responsibility performance.This paper systematically examines the impact and mechanism of environmental regulation,media attention,executives with environmental protection background,and financial performance on corporate environmental responsibility performance from the two-dimensional perspective of external pressure and internal characteristics.Furthermore,this paper analyzes the key issue of how to promote firms to improve the level of environmental responsibility performance.Finally,a “trinity” environmental responsibility performance driving system with government guidance,media supervision and enterprise consciousness are built.First,this paper builds a measurement index system on the basis of clarifying the connotation of corporate environmental responsibility,takes the data of China’s Ashare listed companies with heavy pollution from 2006 to 2019 as a sample to test the reliability and validity of the index system.Moreover,the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics and the reasons for the differences of corporate environmental responsibility performance are analyzed.The results show that:(1)the evaluation index system constructs from seven dimensions of legal awareness,environmental management,environmental impact,environmental construction,environmental strategy,and green management passes the reliability and validity test,and the index system is reliable and consistent.(2)From the perspective of time evolution,the level of environmental responsibility presents a two-dimensional characteristic of “gap” and“growth” over time.From the perspective of spatial characteristics,the level of corporate environmental responsibility shows the spatial characteristics of “western and central regions lead,northeast closely followed and east catch-up”.Correlation analysis results show that environmental regulation,media attention,executives with environmental protection background,and financial performance are closely related to corporate environmental responsibility performance.Second,environmental regulation is an important factor in the formation of external pressure on enterprises,and has a mandatory binding force on the environmental behavior of firms.This paper chooses two heterogeneous environmental regulation tools,sewage charges and environmental subsidies,to investigate the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on corporate environmental responsibility performance,and further analyzes the moderating effects of environmental justice,regional and firm-level factors.The results show that:(1)the sewage charges strengthen corporates’ ability to fulfill environmental responsibility,which is reflected in the external pressure and internal incentive.However,environmental subsidies crowd out corporates’ ability for fulfilling environmental responsibility,which is reflected by rent-seeking and speculation behaviors.(2)The strengthening of environmental justice has further strengthened the positive relationship between sewage charges and corporate environmental responsibility.It has also played a positive role in regulating the relationship between environmental subsidies and corporate environmental responsibility.(3)The effect of sewage charges is more obvious when the level of regional marketization is higher and the capacity of corporate managers is stronger.The effect of environmental subsidies on corporate environmental responsibility is more obvious in non-state-owned firms and firms with strong managerial capabilities.Third,media attention is another important factor that forms the external pressure of enterprises,and has normative binding force on the environmental behavior of firms.This paper draws on the idea of event study method,takes negative media reports as exogenous shocks,and adopts the Heckman two-stage model to explore the impact of media attention on corporate environmental responsibility performance.The results show that:(1)media attention can significantly promote companies to improve environmental responsibility performance,and the higher the media attention,the more obvious the promotion effect.This conclusion remained true after a series of robustness tests.(2)Media attention mainly affects corporate environmental responsibility through three paths: public pressure,government regulation,and managers’ reputation.Fourth,executives with environmental protection background tend to make environment-friendly decisions,and they are the embodiment of the willingness to fulfill corporate environmental responsibilities.Therefore,based on the perspective of the functional characteristics of executives,this paper studies the impact of executives with environmental protection background on corporate environmental responsibility performance,and adds power factors to consider the impact of differences in executive team structure.The results show that:(1)Executives with environmental protection background significantly promote corporate environmental responsibility performance,the higher the power of environmental protection background executives in the top management team,the higher the level of corporate environmental responsibility performance.(2)The effect of executives’ power on corporate environmental responsibility is different within enterprises that adopt different environmental strategies,the positive effect of executives’ power on corporate environmental responsibility performance is more significant in firms that adopt defensive environmental strategies.(3)The power of executives with environmental protection background promotes firms to fulfill environmental responsibility by enhancing their environmental attention and increasing environmental investment expenditures.Fifth,financial performance is the economic basis and internal motivation for enterprises to fulfill their environmental responsibilities.From the perspective of interactive influence,this paper explores the interaction between financial performance and corporate responsibility performance,and analyzes the moderating influence of related factors.The results show that:(1)financial performance has a significant positive impact on environmental responsibility performance,but the impact of environmental responsibility performance on financial performance is not significant.(2)Environmental regulation plays a positive moderation role in the impact of financial performance on environmental responsibility performance,and internal control plays a positive moderation role in the impact of environmental responsibility performance on financial performance.(3)The influence of corporate environmental responsibility performance on financial performance is nonlinear due to the adjustment of enterprise size and age.The larger the enterprise is and the longer the enterprise has been established,the more obvious the promotion effect of environmental responsibility performance on financial performance will be.