Study On The Economic Consequence Of Environmental Information Disclosure In Chinese Listed Companies

The industrial revolution has, on the one hand, greatly boosted the productivity and the capacity of using and transforming the environment, expanded the fields of human activity and produced social wealth on a large scale, and on the other hand, brought a series of new environmental problems and caused worse environmental pollution, giving a serious impact on our social environment and hindering the healthy development of human society. In the face of the severe environmental degradation, mankind had to seriously reflect on their behavior, and re-examine the environment problem, think seriously about human social, economic and environmental sustainable development problem. To defy the resource limitation and realize the coordinated and sustainable development of economy, environment and society, our country has actively promoted the recycling economy and low carbon economy development mode. Enterprises as the microcosmic economic entity play an important role in protecting environment, realize the sustainable development of human society. Environmental information disclosed by corporation have captured the attention of stakeholders as they indicate their fulfillment of the entrusted responsibility and the implementation of effective environmental management behavior.In this context, this paper makes a study of the economical consequences brought by disclosing the environmental information by making combination of situations in China’s capital market as well as the green economy policy, like the green credit, by the sample of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen with heavy pollution industry from2009to2010. This paper first begins with background analysis, theory and literature review and investigation on the present situation of environmental information disclosure, find the cut-in point of the research, and then put forward the research assumption. Then, make empirical study on sample data of the company. Meanwhile in order to study the different environmental disclosure under different information disclosure carrier, this paper divided the sample into two subsamples:the one disclosing environmental information only and the other disclosing and compiling independent report. The results of sample regression have been analyzed comparatively. Empirical analysis enable us to find out that:①In the terms of company’s equity capital, environmental information disclosure level and equity capital is a significant negative correlation. Compared to the company only disclosing environmental information in the annual report, the Listed Companies with additional compiled independent reports have greater effect on the cost of equity capital.②In terms of the corporate debt maturity structure, the higher environmental information disclosure level is, the more new bank loan the company acquired; the environmental information disclosure has a greater effect on new short-term borrowing than new long-term loans; compared to the company only disclosing environmental information in the annual report, the Listed Companies compiling additional independent reports of the information have a greater effect on the influence degree of new long-term loans than environment information on the new bank borrowings and new short-term borrowing more influence. Finally, with reference to the conclusion and the status quo of the environmental information disclosure, this paper gives specific recommendations respectively for listed companies, government regulators and investors and proposed the shortcomings in itself and prospects for follow-up study.