Environmental Regulations, Agency Costs And Corporate Environmental Investment

In recent years,with the rapid development of China's economy,environmental pollution has become increasingly serious,and there is a long way to go to promote the construction of ecological civilization.At present,the vast majority of serious environmental pollution in China comes from the production and operation activities of enterprises.Enterprises have become the main consumers of resources and energy and the main producers of environmental problems.They should bear the corresponding responsibility for environmental protection.Among them,the enterprises in heavy polluting industries cause serious pollution to the environment,so it is necessary to study the environmental protection investment of enterprises in heavy polluting industries.Because enterprises' investment in environmental protection will affect the realization of economic benefits in a short time,most enterprises are unwilling to take the initiative to promote environmental investment and environmental pollution control,and need the government to exert certain regulatory pressure.Environmental regulation plays an important role in promoting enterprises' investment in environmental protection.The environmental protection investment of enterprises is carried out by the management through the formulation of environmental strategies and policies.Does the existence of agency cost weaken the promotion effect of environmental regulation on the environmental protection investment of enterprises?Therefore,it is necessary to take listed companies in heavy pollution industries as the main research object to study the impact of environmental regulation on enterprises' investment in environmental protection,and to find out whether agency cost plays a regulatory role in the process of environmental regulation on enterprises' investment in environmental protection.It is helpful to promote the optimal allocation of government environmental protection policies,to improve the internal governance mechanism of enterprises,and to jointly develop both inside and outside enterprises.Promote the enterprises as the micro-main body of environmental protection to increase the scale of environmental protection investment.Based on the legitimacy theory,corporate social responsibility theory,principal-agent theory and stakeholder theory,this paper puts forward the corresponding research hypothesis and constructs the model after theoretical analysis.This paper takes the listed companies in heavy pollution industry as the research object,and obtains 1035 sample data from 2015 to 2017.The descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis and linear regression analysis are carried out by SPSS23.0 statistical software.Based on this,the conclusions and suggestions of this study are drawn.The conclusions of this paper are as follows:Environmental regulation can promote the investment of enterprises in environmental protection.The environmental protection laws and regulations promulgated by the government have significant effects on restraining enterprises'environmental pollution behavior and expanding the scale of enterprises' environmental protection investment,especially in the sample of state-owned holding enterprises.Agency cost will weaken the role of environmental regulation in promoting enterprises' environmental investment.The study finds that agency cost is not significant in state-owned holding enterprises,but very significant in non-state-owned holding enterprises.In order to promote heavy pollution enterprises to invest more in environmental protection,this paper suggests that the government should continue to strictly enforce the law,strengthen environmental supervision,guide enterprises to become the main body of environmental protection investment,establish an internal environmental protection investment system at the enterprise level,and form a top-down green culture of enterprises.