An Empirical Research On The Effect That Ownership Structure And Management Behavior On The Environmental Disclosure

Since the1970s, environmental disclosure has become the focus of the public.Domestic and foreign scholars have studied on environmental disclosure from theearly normative studies of its content and present situation, to now the increasinglyrich empirical studies of its influencing factors, the fields of the study ofenvironmental disclosure have been expanded. However recently, the frequentlylarge-scale environmental accidents have sounded the alarm, and corporateenvironmental information disclosure is pushed to the cusp. Do these pollutionincidents occur by chance or necessity? By accident or man-made? What is theconnection with the behavior of shareholders and management? Whether theoccurrence of these tragedies can be avoid by environmental disclosure mechanism?These questions led to profound thinking of the author.According to the principal-agent theory, the management actually controls thecompany. The bad performance of environmental disclosure in Chinese enterpriseshas a direct correlation to the management behavior, which is directly affected by thechanges of ownership structure. Against the background of management’s selectivedisclosure, is ownership structure helpful to restrain this behavior of management,and improve the level of corporate environmental information disclosure? In thispaper, we choose the listed companies whose average assets are the top20%fromShanghai A-share in the period of2007-2010as our research samples. Based on theprincipal-agent theory and the stakeholder theory, we empirically test the effect thatownership structure have on the environmental disclosure selection. The results showthat the managements are actively disclose environmental information under thesupervision of controlling shareholders, activist stockholders and governmentdepartments; managerial ownership is also conducive to raise the level of corporateenvironmental information disclosure. Institutional investors’ holding not only fails toinhibit the selective disclosure behavior of management, but plays a facilitating role.Finally, the policy recommendations are proposed based on the findings obtained fromthe essay, that to improve China’s environmental information disclosure level, wemust strengthen the legal systems and the supervision by government departments;encourage managerial ownership, and increase the proportion of managerialownership; Strengthen the sense of social responsibility of institutional investors, andinspire the positive guidance role of them.