The Research On Relationship Among Environmental Disclosure And Enterprise Performance

With the rapid development of the global economy, the human’s survival of ecological environment has been severely damaged. There are environmental pollution accidents continuely all over the world and fog and haze lingers which result in a significant increase in the incidence of cancer, respiratory diseases and so on. Governments had introduced environmental policies and measures to achieve the sustainable development of society and environment.Businesses are the subject to create wealth for society, which are the culprits to cause environmental pollution at the same time. As members of the society, businesses should be clear the social responsibility they should take for environmental protection and economic development and achieve sustainable development. For businesses, corporate disclosure of environmental information to stakeholders is not only the form of environmental concept of fiduciary duty but also an important basis for information users decisions. In recent years, the government enacted a number of relevant laws and regulations about environmental information disclosure, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s "Open Environmental Information( Trial)", "Environmental Information Disclosure of Listed Companies Guide"( draft), etc. Accordingly, aspects of the research also was strengthened by our scholars. However, compared with foreign studies, our research is in its infancy and studies are mostly normative research-based. Empirical studies are mostly dominated by descriptive statistics. However, there are less study about the relevance of environmental information disclosure and corporate performance and the few research conclusion is also vary widely. Through selecting listed companies of heavy polluting industries as samples, this paper studies the correlation between environmental information disclosure and orporate performance( financial performance, environmental performance), which extends the research aspects of the economic consequences of environmental information disclosure and promotes environmental information disclosure of the practice through the empirical evidence.This paper mainly studies the correlation between environmental information disclosure and orporate performance, by using normative research and empirical analysis. The main contents and findings are presented as follows:1. Redefine the concept of environmental accounting and business performance. Environmental accounting has been aroused people’s wide attention since produced. Different scholars have different understanding about its concept. From the connection between the environment accounting and traditional accounting, some scholars think environmental accounting based on traditional accounting theory, and using its principle and method, using a variety of measurement methods and tools to reflect and control the activities related to the economy with the environment; Other scholars explain the environment accounting from the perspective of compensation resources and think the consumption of natural resources for the production and business operation and environment is nonrenewable. So environmental accounting is a discipline to research the balance and coordination between the enterprise?s development and environment protection, improving the use efficiency of natural resources and the environment. The paper argues that traditional accounting is the foundation of environmental accounting, combined with the essence of economics and the environment, so environmental accounting is a cross strong discipline. Researching the content of environment accounting should be guided by the traditional accounting theory and method.Enterprise performance is generally the improvement of profitability, the formation of the market competitive advantage and the ascension of brand image so on, which refers to the excellent organization and management ability and the practice activities of assuming social( environment) responsibility in their daily operation and management. The concrete can be characterized by two aspects of financial performance and non-financial performance. Financial performance usually refers to the enterprise?s operation ability and profitability, usually measured with the final profitability; Non-financial performance is generally by the enterprise?s sustainable development ability, the identity of the stakeholder, the social responsibility of enterprise, intangible assets? improvement due to the formation of goodwill. The paper considers the environmental performance as non-financial performance, and argues that the environmental performance is an organization that can affect the production activities of environment, products or services through the control, based on the development of their own, the prevention of environment and the goal, finally able to measure environmental management of achievements.2. The comparison of international and domestic environmental accounting information disclosure. Through the study, the paper finds that the foreign research on environmental accounting information disclosure started earlier and research is wider. In recent years, Chinese scholars also have more research and gain some research achievements. But China’s relevant laws and regulations have no corresponding adjustments, giving priority to encourage voluntary disclosure, not mandatory. This may lead to our country enterprise environmental accounting information disclosure with a certain randomness.3. The paper studies the correlation between environmental information disclosure and orporate performance, and the following conclusions includes:(1) the environmental information disclosure level and the corporate financial performance are positive interaction, and the correlation of accounting indicators of net assets yield than the market index tobin Q value of the correlation, which significance is more obvious;(2) the environmental information disclosure level and the positive interaction between environmental performance. Environmental information disclosure level are positively correlated with the enterprise environmental performance.