Empirical Research On Environmental Accounting Information Disclosure In Chinese Listed Companies

In recent years, with the growing awareness of environmental protection, environmental issues attract more and more attention by all countries. Sustainable development has become the common choice of all countries in the world. Thus, to promote the development of circular economy, the modern enterprises shoulder the unavoidable social responsibility of environmental protection in order to achieve sustainable development of the whole society eventually. In this context, environmental accounting emerges as a new branch of accounting.As a starting point of environmental accounting research, environmental accounting information disclosure has become the focus of many scholars. It is necessary not only to the macro-economic management, but also to the internal management. However, the environmental accounting information disclosure in our country is still in its initial stage. The status quo of the disclosure is not optimistic and most belongs to the voluntary disclosure. Under the framework of voluntary information disclosure, this article attempts to carry out empirical study on influencing factors of the environmental accounting information disclosure. By building multivariate regression models for the influencing factors of environmental accounting information disclosure, it provides some evidence for recognizing influencing factors of environmental accounting information disclosure of listed companies in our country, and puts forward some policy recommendations.This article is divided into five sections. Taking reviews at research literatures about the environmental accounting information disclosure at home and abroad, the first part of this article provides some ideas for the study of this article through analysis of those literatures' advantages and weaknesses; The second part describes the theoretical basis of this study, including the sustainable development theory, effective theory, the theory of economic externalities, asymmetric information theory and game theory; The third part introduces the current status of the environmental accounting information disclosure of listed companies. By analyzing the environmental accounting information disclosure systems and practices, it tries to find out problems existing at the environmental accounting information disclosure of listed companies in our country. Meanwhile, in order to improve the environmental accounting information disclosure of listed companies in our country, it compared the status with Japan; As the core of this article, part four takes empirical study on the influencing factors of China's environmental accounting information disclosure of listed companies under the framework of the voluntary disclosure of information, This paper takes the empirical research by selecting 221 companies which are heavily polluting industries of manufacturing in Shanghai as study samples, considering five factors relevant with the environmental accounting voluntary information disclosure acts of the listed companies and taking advantage of statistical software in the multivariate linear regression method. The study found that whether there is an audit committee, the proportion of director shareholders, somebody who dominants two positions, the net return on equity are important factors which impact the environmental accounting information disclosure, while the proportion of independent directors does not have a significant impact on the environmental accounting information disclosure. Taking advantage of empirical research findings, the fifth part is about making related policy recommendations to improve the level of listed companies' environmental accounting information disclosure combined with the status quo of the environmental accounting information disclosure of China's listed companies.