The Impact Of Institutional Pressure On Corporate Environmental Responsibility

When China’s economic structure is being transformed and upgraded,environmental issues have seriously constrained the high-quality development of China’s economy.As the major consumers of resources and major producers of environmental pollution,enterprises have an inevitable responsibility for environmental protection.However,in pursuit of economic benefits,enterprises tend to reduce environmental investment and avoid environmental governance,which exacerbates the severe situation of environmental protection.How to improve corporate environmental responsibility have become important issues that need to be addressed urgently.It is urgent to explore practical ways for enhance corporate environmental responsibility.Economic interests is not sufficient to explain why enterprises engage in environmental protection activities,while institutional pressure provides a new perspective.Enterprises live in society and their decisions are influenced by various stakeholders in society,and the demands of all parties form a comprehensive institutional pressure to push enterprises to behave in accordance with expectations of the overall society.Under institutional pressure,companies will take the initiative to assume corporate environmental responsibility in order to meet the expectations of all stakeholders for favorable external environment.Whether this theory is applicable to China remains to be verified.Moreover,the mechanism of institutional pressure on corporate environmental responsibility is still unclear.Therefore,exploring the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate environmental responsibility is crucial.Based on the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2021,this study uses fixed effect model to verify the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate environmental responsibility.Further analyzes the impact of corporate heterogeneity,and explores the impact mechanism of institutional pressure on corporate environmental responsibility.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Institutional pressure has a positive impact on corporate environmental responsibility.(2)Corporate environmental strategy and internal control play intermediary role in the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate environmental responsibility.Institutional pressure affects corporate environmental responsibility through corporate environmental strategy and internal control.(3)The characteristics of the executive team and the enterprise size have moderating effect on the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate environmental responsibility.The older the average age of the executive team,the higher the educational background of the executive team and the larger the enterprise size,the more helpful to promote corporate environmental responsibility.(4)The impact of institutional pressure on corporate environmental responsibility is stronger in state-owned enterprises,central state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the eastern region.Based on the conclusion,improvements can be made from the government,society and enterprises.At the governmental level,it should play a positive role by improving environmental policies,strengthening the supervision of enterprise environmental protection,actively encouraging and guiding the green development of enterprises.Besides,government should take differentiated environmental protection measures according to the difference of enterprise property rights,enteorise levels,and different regions.At the social level,the media should carry out long-term supervision on the environmental protection behavior of enterprises.The public should actively participate in the supervision of corporate environmental responsibility.And the whole society should encourage environmental protection leading enterprises in various industries.At the enterprise level,enterprises need to ensure the improvement of their environmental responsibilities by correctly responding to environmental institutional pressure,such as implementing green environmental strategy,focusing on strengthening internal control,and promoting the green concepts of executive teams.