Research On The Impact Of Environmental Information Disclosure On The Innovation Performance Of Heavily Polluting Enterprises

High polluting enterprise plays an important role in China's industrial sector,and is the major source of pollution emission.It is of practical significance to study whether environmental regulation facilitates the innovative transformation of such enterprises.As a new type of environmental regulation,environmental information disclosure has received increasing attention from governments as well as enterprises,and it is important to study whether it can promote the innovation performance of high polluting enterprises.Political connections have gradually received attention as an important mechanism to regulate the relationship between environmental information disclosure and enterprise innovation performance.Taking high polluting enterprises in China as the research sample,this paper explores the relationship between environmental information disclosure,political connections and enterprise innovation performance through theoretical analysis as well as empirical tests.The paper firstly integrates the current literature on the relationship between environmental information disclosure,political connections and enterprise innovation performance through literature combing,and conducts mechanism analysis and proposes research hypotheses based on relevant theories.Secondly,we empirically test the effects of mandatory government environmental information disclosure and voluntary corporate environmental information disclosure on enterprise innovation by taking Chinese listed high polluting enterprises as the research sample,and introduce political connections as the moderating variable.At the same time,heterogeneity analysis is further conducted considering the differences existing in the nature of enterprises themselves and the regions they are located in.The results show that both types of environmental information disclosure promote innovation of high polluting enterprises,and political connection negatively moderates the positive relationship between environmental information disclosure and enterprise innovation performance.The study concludes that environmental information disclosure is an effective way to promote the innovative transformation of enterprises.The government can strengthen the role of environmental information disclosure in promoting innovation and upgrading of enterprises by guiding the public to participate in the supervision of corporate environmental governance.At the same time,enterprises should strengthen the content of environmental information disclosure so as to obtain more resources for development.In addition,the central government needs to pay attention to the relationship between local governments and enterprises,clarify the power boundary between them,and avoid the rent-seeking behavior of enterprises to influence the implementation effect of environmental regulation policies.