A Study On The Legitimacy Management Motivation And Effects Of Corporate Environmental Disclosure

With the construction of environment-friendly society in our country, the impact on environment of corporate production and operating activities is attracted more and more social concern. The enterprises in our country are paying attention to environmental disclosure. The motivation and role of corporate environmental disclosure is the main contents in environmental accounting research. Based on legitimacy theory in politics and the institutional backgrounds, the paper explores the motivation and effects of corporate environmental disclosure from the perspectives of media monitoring and legitimacy management.First, based on agenda setting in journalism, the paper analyses the relationships between media monitoring, legitimacy management and corporate environmental disclosure to establish the theoretical framework. Then, the paper introduces the institutional backgrounds of corporate environmental disclosure and the research results at home and abroad. The corporate environmental legitimacy is measured as the Coefficient of J-F which is widely used in foreign research. Finally, using multiple regression analysis, the paper empirically tests and analyses the relations between corporate legitimacy pressure, government's supervision and environmental disclosure, it also tests the legitimacy management effects of corporate environmental disclosure.The results show that:(1)media monitoring significantly improve corporate environmental disclosure; (2)local government's supervision improves corporate environmental disclosure and enhances the media monitoring; (3)corporate environmental disclosure, can improve corporate environmental legitimacy significantly.The paper suggests that, legitimacy management is an important motivation of corporate environmental disclosure in our country, and environmental disclosure is an important way of corporate legitimacy management. Media monitoring has played an important role in promoting corporate environmental disclosure, we should attach importance to the role of media monitoring in environment protection and environment accounting research. The enterprises can use environmental disclosure to improve their legitimacy.