The Impact Of Environmental Responsibility On Corporate Performance

The deterioration of ecological environment has become a major factor limiting the quality development of China’s economy.Since the 18 th Party Congress incorporated the construction of ecological civilization into the general layout of "Fivein-One",the realization of green and low-carbon development has become an important issue for the whole society.As a major polluter and an important part of the national environmental protection plan,enterprises should formulate environmental protection strategies,fulfill their environmental responsibilities,and strive to promote a new pattern of green development.However,as profit-seeking economic agents,enterprises will only become more actively involved when fulfilling their environmental responsibilities is consistent with the goal of continuously creating corporate value.Therefore,finding a sustainable development path that is consistent with both economic goals and environmental requirements is a key issue that Chinese enterprises need to address urgently at present.Combining the natural resource-based view,Porter’s hypothesis,corporate reputation theory,organizational identity theory and related literature,this thesis reviews the literature on the connotation of environmental responsibility,the factors influencing the fulfillment of environmental responsibility,and the effect of environmental responsibility on corporate performance;then,this thesis elaborates the impact paths and effects of environmental responsibility on corporate performance from three perspectives: green innovation,green reputation and green organizational identity.Then,this thesis uses the environmental responsibility score and Tobin’s Q value to represent the performance of environmental responsibility and corporate performance respectively,and conducts a preliminary analysis on 22 mining enterprises in the upstream of the industry chain in the non-ferrous metals industry.Further,this thesis selects Zijin Mining as a case study and analyzes the changes in its corporate performance after adopting environmental protection measures from different dimensions and compares it with its peers,and finds that Zijin Mining’s financial performance and non-financial performance have been improved.Finally,based on the case study of Zijin Mining,this thesis draws the following conclusions: First,environmental responsibility is correlated with corporate performance,especially in heavily polluted industries that are subject to more stringent environmental regulations.Secondly,the fulfillment of environmental responsibility by firms will have an impact on firm performance through the paths of green innovation,green reputation,and green organizational identity.Green innovation can form a lowcost advantage for enterprises and bring more revenue;good green reputation brings support from government and investors for enterprise development and access to government subsidies and financing facilities;employees’ recognition of enterprises’ environmental behavior can be transformed into productivity and enhance the economic output of enterprises.Third,the fulfillment of environmental responsibility improves corporate performance.In terms of financial performance,the fulfillment of environmental responsibility improves the profitability,solvency and management efficiency of enterprises and realizes cost reduction and efficiency increase;in terms of environmental performance,enterprises have made significant progress in energy saving and emission reduction,energy transformation and ecological management;meanwhile,the brand value also grows with the overall performance improvement.There are 18 figures,13 tables and 110 references in this thesis.