Research On The Relationship Between Corporate Environmental Protection Investment, Environmental Performance And Economic Performance

The relationship between environmental behavior,environmental performance and economic performance has gradually become a hot spot in academic circles.Due to the differences in the choice of measurement index of environmental behavior of enterprises,there are some disputes about the relationship between these three factors.Some views hold that the positive environmental behavior of enterprises causes them to waste a lot of resources,deviating from the goal of maximizing shareholders 'rights and interests,and ultimately affect the interests of enterprises.Another very different view is that positive environmental behavior of enterprises can promote the improvement of their own level of technological innovation,accelerating the speed of industrial upgrading,improving the efficiency of business operations,and eventually promote economic benefits.This thesis takes the environmental protection investment of enterprise as the measurement index of enterprise's environmental behavior,choosing heavy pollution enterprise as the research object,and explores the relationship between the three from two parts:theoretical analysis and empirical test.Among them,the theoretical analysis is carried out from three aspects.First,according to stakeholder theory and corporate social responsibility theory,this article believes that in order to improve its own environmental performance to meet the demands of stakeholders and prove that it has assumed environmental protection responsibilities,enterprises need to make certain environmental investment.Second,according to the theory of sustainable development,environmental investment by enterprises will not only have a positive impact on their economic performance in a short period of time,but also in the long term promote economic performance due to the advantages of technological innovation brought about by environmental investment.That is,environmental investment has a positive impact on economic performance,and this effect has hysteresis.Third,based on the signal transmission theory,companies will improve their environmental performance by investing in environmental protection,leaving a good impression on the public and the regulatory agencies that they have the courage to assume social responsibility,which will enhance the company's popularity and form a special competitive advantage.This helps enterprises to achieve higher economic performance,which shows that environmental performance plays an intermediary effect in the impact of environmental protection investment on economic performance.During the period 2013-2017,taking China's heavily polluting enterprises as the research object,through the enterprise's capital investment in the environment in these years as the calculation basis for the enterprise's environmental protection investment,the unit operating income emission fee selected as the proxy indicator of environmental performance,using the net interest rate of total assets as the proxy index of economic performance,the empirical test part putting descriptive statistics,correlation analysis,multivariate linear regression analysis,hysteresis test and intermediary effect analysis studies the three relationships,and draws the following conclusions:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between environmental investment and environmental performance of listed enterprises in heavy pollution industries of China.(2)There is a significant positive correlation between environmental protection investment and economic performance of listed enterprises in heavy pollution industries,and this positive relationship has hysteresis.(3)Heavy pollution of the environmental performance of listed enterprises plays a part of the intermediary effect on the economic performance of enterprises environmental protection investment.In addition,in order to ensure the credibility of empirical research and the comparability of data,this thesis chooses the return on net assets as an agent indicator of economic performance to conduct a robustness test.Correlation results are consistent and the significance of empirical results has also improved,which shows that the conclusion of this study is reliable and provides references for the selection of indicators in future studies.Based on the empirical research results,this thesis describes the problems existing in enterprises clearly and gives corresponding countermeasures to the government and enterprises respectively.Finally,this thesis points out the shortcomings in the research and gives some inspiration to the related research in the future.