The Study On The Determinants Of Carbon Accounting Information Disclosure Of The Chinese Listed Companies

Following the reform and opening up, the growth of China’s economy acceleratedwith bringing serious environmental problems, especially increasing carbon dioxideemissions. This problem puts the tremendous pressure on the social economic andecological environment. According to this background, more and more departments,enterprises and individuals realize the relation between carbon emissions and their ownlong-term development. Thus they respond to the call of transforming to the low carboneconomy.This paper employs the empirical research method to study the factors of carbonaccounting information disclosure on the basis of stating sustainable developmenttheory, social responsibility theory, Signal Transfer Theory, principle of benefit, etc. Theaim is to raise carbon accounting information disclosure level and achieve the effect ofsaving energy and reducing emission. Starting from the existing research results athome and abroad, this paper collects the statistics of91enterprises of Shanghai stockmarket from2009to2013, which make up455samples. Then it chose the carbonaccounting information disclosure level as the dependent variable and takes six factorswhich respectively are the characteristics of the industry, size, financial performance,development ability, risk level and corporate governance as the independent variables.Then it has an empirical analysis. The outcome of descriptive statistical analysisindicates that presently the carbon accounting information disclosure level on China’slisting Corporation generally remains low because of weak sense. According to theresult of regression analysis, three variables which are the characteristics of the industry,company size and development ability have the significant positive correlations withcarbon accounting information disclosure level. These factors have the promoting effecton the dependent variable. Among them, there are obvious differences betweenindustries on the carbon accounting information disclosure level. Furthermore the levelof heavy pollution industry is higher than that of non heavy pollution industry owing to the constraint of national policy. Comparing to the small-scale enterprises, the largescale enterprises are inclined to disclosure more carbon accounting information in orderto maintain social image. Some firms with strong development ability lay emphasis onsustainable development, thus they have higher carbon accounting informationdisclosure level. In addition, financial performance has a negative correlation withcarbon accounting information disclosure level, which shows that these enterprises mayignore the social responsibility when they are in pursuit of economic interests. Risklevels has the positive correlation with carbon accounting disclosure level but notsignificant, which indicates that companies may take diversified measures to reducerisks.Thus it has a weak impact on the dependent variable. Besides, among the index ofCorporate governance, unreasonable corporate governance structure and seriousformalization lead to the result that CEO Duality have no effect on the dependentvariable and the ratio of Independent director does not play a role of improving thecarbon accounting information disclosure level.At last, the author proposes the possible effective suggestions and countermeasures.Firstly, according to the empirical research conclusion, this paper puts forward somemeasures from the angle of transforming ideas, controlling risk and improving corporategovernance structure. Secondly, according to other factors which is not included in theindependent variables, this paper makes measures from the point of governmentsupervision, training personnel, international cooperation and so on.Through the abovemeasures, the main purpose is to promote carbon information disclosure level onChina’s listing Corporation.