The Impact Of Environmental Disclosure On Corporate Debt Financing

China has experienced extensive economic growth for a long period of time,which has led to an increasingly serious problem of environmental pollution.Highly energy-consuming and highly polluting heavy polluting enterprises are one of the most important causes of environmental degradation in China.At present,the main method of debt financing for heavily polluting enterprises in China is still bank credit.In order to allow banks and other financial institutions to fully consider the implementation of corporate environmental responsibility when making credit decisions,the Chinese government has adopted a "green credit" policy to combine the external financing needs of enterprises with their environmental performance,prompting companies to actively disclose environmental information.At the same time,the government has continuously raised the threshold of corporate environmental management and improved environmental disclosure laws and regulations,requiring key pollution emission enterprises to disclose their environmental information to the society in a timely manner,and encourage other companies to actively disclose environmental information to reduce the information asymmetry between companies and creditors such as banks.This article takes the disclosure of environmental information as an entry point.Firstly analyzes the impact of environmental information disclosure on the debt financing of heavily polluting industries from the theoretical perspective of economics.Then,with the help of the self-constructed environmental information disclosure evaluation indicators,this article studies the relationship between environmental information disclosure and the debt financing based on the sample of the A shares listed companies in the heavily polluting industry in the 2015-2016 period of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.Finally the following main conclusions are reached:1.The listed companies in the heavily polluting industries can get more debt financing by increasing the level of environmental information disclosure;The listed companies in the heavily polluting industries cannot reduce the cost of corporate debt financing by raising the level of environmental information disclosure;Compared with long-term borrowing,the improvement of the level of environmental information disclosure is more beneficial to heavy polluting industries to obtain more short-term loans.2.Three of the eleven evaluation indicators have a great influence on the debt financing of listed companies in heavily polluting industries.The three indicators are the audit of the disclosed information,environmental protection objectives and environmental management systems,and the environmental management system certification.