A Research On The Impact Of Confucian Culture On Corporate Climate Change Risk Disclosure

With the worsening global climate in recent years,the risks brought by climate change have become increasingly prominent.As a result,the disclosure of climate change risks by companies is receiving more and more attention from stakeholders.As a representative of China’s excellent traditional culture,does Confucian culture have an impact on the disclosure of climate change risks by companies in the process of China’s economic green transformation and socialist cultural construction? This article uses text analysis and machine learning techniques based on the social responsibility report text data of Chinese A-share listed companies to construct a measure of the disclosure quality of climate change risks at the corporate level.Furthermore,this article describes the annual trend and industry distribution characteristics of climate change risk disclosure by Chinese listed companies based on this measure.The study breaks through the traditional institutional theory analysis framework and examines the impact and mechanism of Confucian culture on corporate climate change risk disclosure from an informal institutional perspective,providing strong empirical evidence for revealing the cultural motivation for corporate climate change risk disclosure.The study found that Confucian culture has a significant "driving effect" on corporate climate change risk disclosure.The greater the influence of Confucian culture on a company,the higher its level of climate change risk disclosure.After using instrumental variable methods to alleviate endogeneity problems,a series of robustness tests confirmed the robustness of the above research conclusions.The positive promotion effect of Confucian culture on corporate climate change risk disclosure is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises,heavily polluting enterprises,enterprises with less industry competition pressure,and enterprises in regions with lower degrees of openness.Further mechanism tests found that Confucian culture mainly drives corporate climate change risk disclosure through enhancing corporate reputation,alleviating agency conflicts,and promoting corporate environmental responsibility.At the same time,CEO academic experience and improved regional legal environment can play a positive regulatory role.Finally,the Confucian culture-driven corporate climate change risk disclosure not only helps promote high-quality green innovation but also enhances corporate value,brings about corporate valuation premiums,and has both green and economic benefits.The marginal contributions of this article are mainly reflected in three aspects.Firstly,based on the differences between China’s unique capital market information disclosure system and Chinese language corpus context,this article constructs a measure of climate change risk disclosure at the corporate level of Chinese listed companies.Compared with Sautner et al.(2020),who measured corporate climate change risk disclosure using text data from US listed company financial report conference calls,this article fully considers the current status of China’s capital market information disclosure system and the special characteristics of Chinese-language corpus text recognition.Based on the non-structured text data of social responsibility reports of Chinese A-share listed companies,this article uses text analysis and machine learning techniques to construct a measure reflecting the level of corporate climate change risk disclosure and ensures the validity of this measure through a series of tests.Compared with existing research,this measure can more directly and objectively reflect the dynamic changes of climate change risk disclosure by Chinese listed companies,providing an important reference for the construction of relevant indicators in subsequent research.Secondly,from the perspective of Confucian culture as an informal institution,this article enriches and extends the research on the factors influencing corporate climate change risk disclosure.This article breaks through the traditional research framework of formal institutions,in which most scholars start with corporate governance and institutional environment(Yan and Chen,2017;Ben-Amar et al.,2015;He et al.,2021;Comyns,2016),and systematically examines the impact of Confucian culture on corporate climate change risk disclosure from an informal institutional perspective,revealing the cultural motivation for corporate climate change risk disclosure and further expanding the depth and breadth of research in the field of "culture and climate finance".Thirdly,this article empirically tests the positive significance of Confucian culture on corporate climate change risk disclosure and explores its impact mechanism and economic consequences,providing a theoretical basis for Confucian culture to promote corporate climate change risk disclosure and further promote green innovation and value creation by companies,as well as providing empirical evidence.More importantly,based on Chinese listed company data and taking into account macro elements such as the current national "dual-carbon" development strategy and the socialist cultural power strategy,this article provides policy recommendations rooted in China’s reality to help China’s economy achieve high-quality development.