The Relationship Between Carbon Accounting Information Disclosure And Cost Of Capital

With the development of low carbon economy, investors increasingly pay much attention to carbon emissions; meanwhile, carbon-accounting information is playing a role in investment decision and capital cost. Based on the review of related literatures and data at home and abroad, this paper selected233eligible enterprises from listed enterprises in Shenzhen and Shanghai in2011as samples for research. In order to have a basic knowledge about the data, carbon-accounting information disclosure index and other variables were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. Then a conclusion was drawn by testing the correlation between variables. At last the relationship between carbon-accounting information disclosure and capital cost was tested by multiple regression analysis. The result reveals that currently the level of carbon-accounting information disclosure in Chinese enterprises reminds relatively low and has large space to improve. Furthermore, enterprises’scale and liabilities are two important factors in carbon-accounting information disclosure which is significantly positively correlated with the two factors. And the level of carbon-accounting information disclosure has a negative correlation with capital cost, which means that carbon-accounting information disclosure could help enterprises reduce capital cost. Liquidity risk in investors investing in stocks is the link between carbon-accounting information disclosure and capital cost, which means carbon-accounting information disclosure could reduce the liquidity risk of stocks. According to the risk-return trade-off principle, the capital cost would also be reduced in accord with the liquidity risk. Moreover, the result also shows that prediction risk is not the link between carbon-accounting information disclosure and capital cost; scientific research into low-carbon has a significant negative correlation with capital cost. Based on empirical research and conclusions, this paper would respectively propose some suggestions from the perspective of enterprises, government and investors, and hope make some contributions to the promotion of carbon-accounting information disclosure and development of low-carbon economy.