Research On The Application Of Accounting Professional Judgment In Enterprise's Environmental Accounting Information Disclosure

As environmental problem has become increasingly global in recent years, environmental accounting disclosure becomes one of the most popular and challenging topics in academic field. Prior research on this topic in US and Europe mostly focused on its relationship with related industries. However, it is still questioning how to adopt environmental accounting disclosure appropriately and scientifically given the existing environmental accounting disclosure environment, which lacks practical environmental accounting standards and rules, and current condition of enterprises, which lacks motivation to construct an applicable disclosure system, leaving a long way for accountants to conduct professional judgment. Accordingly, in order to improve the reliability of accounting information, it is extremely crucial to study on issues of accounting professional judgment in area of environmental accounting disclosure.Based on prior research and theory framework, this thesis analyzed the necessity and impacts of accounting professional judgment on environmental accounting disclosure by conducting empirical research, aiming at providing implication for regulators and corporations.First of all. this thesis discussed the theoretical and practical basis to apply accounting professional judgment in environmental accounting disclosure. The author analyzed theoretical basis from the objectives, causes, and objects of environmental accounting disclosure. As for the practical requirements, the existing problems are focused on. it is found that it is of great necessity to combine accounting professional judgment with environmental accounting disclosure in terms of the uncertainty of disclosure environment, disclosure format, and measurement, the weakness of environmental laws and environmental accounting disclosure standards, and the complexity of environmental accounting items and disclosure time.Second, this thesis analyzed the role that accounting professional judgment plays in environmental accounting referring to environmental disclosure theory, and then conducted empirical research. Samples were collected from 150 companies in chemical industry traded in Shenzhen and Shanghai Stock Exchange in the year of 2009. Environmental accounting disclosure index was chosen as dependent variable, and several independent variables are included. such as education background of accountants, working period. professional certification, management ownership, CEO duality, etc. Multi-regression model was constructed to examine the association between application of accounting professional judgment and environmental accounting disclosure. Empirical results suggest that accounting professional judgment influences the extent of environment accounting disclosure. Specifically, there is a strong positive association between education background of accountants and the extent of environmental disclosure, which is significant in the level of 0.01.Third, this thesis explored how to construct the framework to apply accounting professional judgment to environmental accounting disclosure by combining environmental rules of our country, environmental disclosure standards, and the current situation of poor environmental disclosure quality. The accounting professional judgment framework is mainly developed from the perspectives of selectivity of disclosure content, uncertainty of items, diversity of disclosure format.Finally, the author gave some suggestions on the application of accounting professional judgment in environmental accounting disclosure. Especially under the hypothesis test result that education background is strongly positive related with the extent of environmental accounting disclosure, it is highly recommended that accountants should improve their professional ability by taking part in full-time study program, such as EMBA. In addition, the environmental factors should also be paid attention to, such as implementation of environmental regulations, corporate governance structure, and so on. By the end of the thesis, the author discussed the limitation and prospect of this thesis, in order to give implication to both government and public for further improvement in the field of environmental accounting disclosure.