宗教社会规范强度影响企业的节能减排成效吗?

Does Religious Social Norms Intensity Affect Corporate Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction?

习近平总书记提出的"加快生态文明体制改革,建设美丽中国"倡议彰显出制度建设对环境治理的重要性。开展环境治理不仅受到正式制度的影响,而且还受到社会规范等非正式制度的影响。中国共产党第十九次全国代表大会报告强调"深入挖掘中华优秀传统文化蕴含的思想观念、人文精神、道德规范"的发展方针。在此背景下,本文通过分析2008—2014年污染行业上市公司的宗教社会规范和节能减排的手工数据,研究了宗教社会规范对节能减排的影响。基于地理临近性概念,本文采用企业注册地附近的宗教场所数量度量了宗教社会规范的强度。此外,本文通过对污染行业企业的环境信息进行文本分析,构建了节能减排成效评分。研究结果显示,宗教社会规范与污染行业公司节能减排的成效评分显著正相关,表明处于宗教氛围越浓厚地区的公司开展节能减排的成效越好。进一步,在设立公共关系委员会的公司中,宗教社会规范强度与节能减排之间的正向联系更显著,说明公共关系委员会有助于强化宗教社会规范对节能减排的促进作用。本文的研究发现为认识宗教社会规范作为一类重要的非正式制度对企业节能减排的影响提供了重要的参考。

In recent years,environmental issues have attracted close attention from the public,and the consensus appears to be that social systems play a crucial role in improving environmental performance. The General Secretary, Xi Jinping, put forward a guideline,＂ speeding up reform of the system for developing an ecological civilization, and building a beautiful China＂ ,to highlight important roles of the system construction in environmental governance, which is not only affected by formal social systems, but also influenced by informal systems such as social norms. Previous literature documents that corporate environmental governance is affected by environmental regulations, official changes, governmental checks, stakeholder pressures, and corporate governance mechanisms. However, there is little evidence about whether and how Chinese traditional religions influence corporate environmental governance. Moreover, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized that ＂we should draw on China＇s fine traditional culture, keep alive and develop its vision, concepts, values, and moral norms＂. Against this background, using hand-collected data on religious social norms and ＂ energy conservation and emission reduction（ECER） ＂ during the period of 2008 -2014,this paper investigates the impacts of religious social norms on ECER. The environmental awareness included in Buddhism and Daoism is more likely to arise from their views about the origin of the World,value-orientation,and religious ideal. Buddhism and Daoism emphasize the connections among all things, the compliance with natural laws, and seeking heaven. Clearly, these propositions affect personal environmental awareness through religious belief and/or organizational legitimacy. Therefore, this study predicts that religious norms are positively associated with ECER performance. Based upon geographic proximity, this study employs the number of religious sites around a firm＇s registered address to measure the intensity of corporate religious social norms. In addition, this research constructs the score of ECER by analyzing corporate environmental disclosures. The results show that religious social norms are significantly associated with an increase in ECER performance,implying that religious atmosphere can improve energy conservation and emission reduction performance. Moreover, the positive association between religious social norms and ECER is more pronounced for firms with public relation committee than their counterparts, suggesting that public relation committee is conducive to reinforcing the positive effect of religious social norms on ECER. Above findings still hold after controlling for the endogeniety between dependent and independent variables. Our study provides an important reference for religious influence as an important informal system on energy conservation and emission reduction. This study contributes to existing literature in several ways. First, our study adds a novel insight into the existing literature about the determinants of environmental governance by revealing the roles of religious social norms in ECER. Second,this study extends the literature about religious influence on corporate behavior by examining the association between religious norms and corporate environmental governance. Third, this study provides important evidence for the roles of public relation committee in environmental governance. Finally, our finding about the reinforcement effects of public relation committee on the positive association religious social norms and ECER contributes to the existing literature about the moderating impacts between formal systems and informal systems. Of course, this study has several implications for the government and practitioners. First, the regulators should consider the impacts of Chinese traditional religions on environmental governance, and thus can improve the validity and efficiency of regulations. Second, environmental practitioners can guide publicly environmental awareness through the conduit of religious influence to achieve the purpose of long-term governance. Third, the government and shareholders need to take actions to improve the institutional system about public relation committee. Finally, regulators,managers, and other stakeholders should take the interactive effects between religious social norms and governance mechanisms into account when they conduct environmental governance.