The Impact Of Environmental Informationdisclosure On The Profitability Of Listed Companies

With the increasing attention of the public to the environmental problems of enterprises,the disclosure of environmental information of enterprises has become an important criterion for people to judge the value of enterprises.The call for environmental information disclosure system is getting higher and higher,showing a relatively urgent public demand.Therefore,government departments have formulated environmental information disclosure policies.According to existing policies,heavy pollution industries are subject to mandatory disclosure requirements.On the one hand,companies that disclose information are often regarded as more socially responsible,and their products and services are more likely to win the public’s favor.People are more willing to pay "environmental premium" for them,which is reflected in the improvement of corporate profitability.On the other hand,the disclosure of environmental information means more investment in environmental protection and governance costs,and the production cost of enterprises will increase,which may reduce the profitability of enterprises.What is the relationship between environmental information disclosure and corporate profitability? There is no consensus in the existing literature,so it is necessary to study it.This paper analyzes the current situation of environmental information disclosure theory of listed companies in China on the basis of combing the relevant documents of environmental information disclosure of listed companies both at home and abroad.Referring to Jiang Yaoming’s(2016)research and analysis on the profitability index of listed manufacturing companies,the paper selects(ROE)and(EPS),to constitute the profitability evaluation index of listed companies in the commonly used profitability index and net assets return rate of return(RPE)and earnings per share(EPS),).Choosing 2008 as the policy node of enterprise environmental information disclosure,taking the data of construction industry and mining listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets as research samples in 2007 and 2017,the non-social responsibility is eliminated.In order to ensure the availability of financial data and to eliminate the missing samples of companies to ensure the reliability of the data,the listed companies reported were excluded from the sample of companies that had just been listed in the year under study in order to ensure the availability of the financial data of the company.72 listed companies in construction industry and mining industry were divided into experimental group and control group according to whether or not to disclose the environmental information.Under the control of other factors,the double difference tendency score matching model is used to accurately study the policy effect of environmental information disclosure and its influence on the profitability of listed enterprises.The empirical research shows that since 2008,the “first year of environmental information disclosure” policy has had a significant impact on the construction industry and the mining industry in the heavily polluting industry: the degree of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in the construction industry has increased by 1.619.The degree of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in the mining industry increased by 1.232.It can be seen that the implementation of the environmental information disclosure policy has a significant positive impact on the disclosure level of the listed companies in the construction industry and mining industry.The empirical results of the environmental information disclosure policy on the profitability of listed companies show that the implementation of the environmental information disclosure policy has not had a significant impact on the listed company’s profitability(return on assets(ROE)and earnings per share(EPS)).Therefore,it can be concluded that the implementation of the environmental information disclosure policy can significantly improve the environmental information disclosure level of the construction industry and the mining industry,but it does not have a significant impact on its profitability.Based on this,the following policy recommendations are proposed: the government should broaden the scope of the industry covered by environmental information disclosure and standardize the disclosure content;listed companies should strengthen their sense of social responsibility,consciously green their behavior,and openly disclose information;the public should raise awareness of social supervision The use of "voting with the feet" forced companies to comply with environmental regulations;eventually formed a virtuous circle of government requirements-corporate attention-public supervision.