Research On Influencing Factors Of Environmental Accounting Information Disclosure In Thermal Power Enterprises

Since the reform and open policy has been implemented in China, there are more and more environmental problems caused by the relatively rapid development of national economy. It seems that the environmental pollution has a direct negative impact on people’s physical and mental health, as well as their life quality. In order to solve this problem effectively, the government has introduced a series of laws, regulations, and management standards in relation to restricting and improving environmental pollution. Based on the particularity of thermal power enterprises, they have the unavoidable responsibility in the aspect of environment management. It should be pointed out that revealing environmental information factually by accounting methods is undoubtedly one of the vital measures. However, the result in relation to the environmental accounting information disclosure of thermal power enterprise in our country is not ideal. Although the number of these enterprises is increasing year by year, they all focus on the positive aspects rather than the quality and relatively negative information. It seems that the levels of environmental accounting information disclosure need to be improved. Thus, it may be an effective approach to have the research about the influencing factors of environmental accounting information disclosure in thermal power enterprise.In the first part, environmental accounting information disclosure in relation to its definition, content, approaches, relating supported theories, and national policies are introduced. Additionally, based on the sample of this paper about the environmental accounting disclosure situation in 41 thermal power enterprise in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2012 to 2014, a statistical analysis will be given. In the second part, the research will focus on the inner factors that influence the environmental accounting information disclosure in thermal power enterprises. Then, the environmental accounting information revealed in 41 thermal power enterprises’ annual report or social responsibility report of Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2012 to 2014 will be evaluated by calculating each listed thermal power enterprise’s environmental accounting information disclosure index each year. In addition, the typical characteristics(enterprise scale, profitability, value) of listed thermal power organizations and corporate governance variables(the proportion of independent directors, ownership concentration) will be chosen. At last, hypothesis in relation to the correlation of environmental accounting information disclosure level will be put forward to establish a multiple regression model with the aim of inspecting the influence of organization’s characteristic factors and the corporate governance factors on environmental information disclosure of listed thermal power enterprises. The inspection shows the following results:(1) the organizational characteristics, the company size, the value of the company have significantly positive correlation with the environmental accounting information disclosure level. In addition, it seems that the level of profitability has no significant influence on the environmental accounting information disclosure level.(2)As for the aspect of corporate governance, ownership concentration has obviously positive correlation with the environmental accounting information disclosure level. However, proportion of independent directors may not impact the environmental accounting information disclosure level to relatively large extent. Then, with the consideration of the external factors that influence environmental accounting information disclosure of listed thermal power companies, this article analyzes the impact of government actions, media supervision, and the environmental risk review on accounting information disclosure of listed thermal power companies. The finding is that these three factors all can promote the environmental accounting information disclosure of listed thermal power companies.At last, combining the internal and external influencing factors based on the above research findings, some strategies and suggestions in relation to aspects including the government, organizations, and society are put forward to improve Chinese environmental information disclosure of listed thermal power companies.