Study On The Status And Influence Factors Of Environmental Information Disclosure By Chinese Companies

With the advent of low-carbon economy, disclosure of environmental information has in effect become a major communication tool between corporations and the society. This article attempts to explore and investigate the current situation and the Influence factors of environmental information disclosure in heavy polluting industries in order to search for an effective way to improve the level of environmental information disclosure and be helpful for regulators to regulate the environmental information disclosure.The first part of the article analyses the quantity, quality and content of environmental information disclosure in annual reports of listed companies in heavy polluting industries from 2006 to 2008; the second part of the article analyses the relationship between Characteristic of company with the environmental information disclosure and the effect of corporate governance to environmental information disclosure. The major findings of this article exhibit that:(1)the percentage of companies with environmental disclosures has increased significantly in the past 3 years; (2)with the increase of the quantity of environmental disclosure, the quality is decreasing, which means an imbalance between quality and quantity of environmental disclosure; (3)in different industries, the quantity and quality of environment disclosure are significantly different; (4)few companies have disclosed all aspects of environmental information. Companies put more efforts on disclosing positive and descriptive environmental information which is hard to be verified and neglect the information about resource consumption and discharge of pollutants which may have some negative effects; (5)there are significant correlation between company character and environmental information disclosure; (6)decent Corporate governance can improve environmental information disclosure, especially in those companies which have financing requirements.On such condition, this article suggests that:consummate the content of environmental information disclosure, strengthen the construction of corporate character and governance on certain external pressure are important to listed companies.