空气质量改善能降低企业劳动力成本吗?

Does the Improvement of Air Quality Decrease Firm Labor Cost?

空气质量是职工的一项重要非货币性收益,与货币薪酬可能形成替代。本文以2005~2015年我国上市公司为研究样本,利用城市层面的空气质量数据,考察了空气质量与企业劳动力成本的关系。研究发现:空气质量与企业职工薪酬水平显著负相关。职工的维权意识和非劳动力密集特征会加强空气质量与企业职工薪酬的负相关关系。如果企业根据空气质量调整员工薪酬,则有利于未来企业价值的提高。同时,本文也发现在不同产权性质、不同现金持有水平、不同污染程度行业和不同员工谈判能力的公司中,空气质量对于职工薪酬的影响存在显著差异。进一步研究发现,是较差的空气质量在发挥主要作用。最后,本文区分了职工薪酬水平的影响,发现高薪职工和低薪职工对空气质量的要求存有显著差异。综合而言,极端的空气变化会导致样本企业职工平均薪酬有1.421万元的年薪差异,按照此口径粗略测算,样本期间全国所有企业会有23万亿元左右的劳动力成本差异。本文拓展了空气质量对微观企业行为影响的研究领域,丰富了职工薪酬影响因素的理论文献,在企业管理实践中可以为职工激励和成本管理提供实证借鉴,也进一步从劳动力成本角度为"绿水青山就是金山银山"提供了实证的支持证据。

Air quality is an important non-monetary benefit for employees and may be a substitute for monetary compensation. This paper takes the listed companies in China from 2005 to 2015 as a research sample and uses the air quality data at the city level to examine the relationship between air quality and labor costs. The study found that air quality is significantly negatively correlated with the level of employee compensation. Workers’ awareness of rights protection and non-labor-intensive characteristics will enhance the negative correlation between air quality and employee compensation. If the company adjusts employee compensation according to air quality, it will help to improve the value of the enterprise in the future. At the same time, this paper also finds that there are significant differences in the impact of air quality on employee compensation in different property rights, different cash holding levels, different industries with different degree of polluted environment and different bargain power of employee. Further research found that poor air quality plays a major role. Finally, the paper distinguishes the impact of employee compensation levels and finds that there are significant differences in air quality requirements between high-paid employees and low-paid employees. In general, extreme air changes will result in an average salary difference of 14.21 million for the employees of the research sample enterprises. According to this rough estimate, all enterprises in the country will have a labor cost difference of about 23 trillion during the sample period. The conclusion of this paper expands the research field of the influence of air quality on micro-enterprise behavior, enriches the theoretical literature on the factors affecting employee compensation, and provides empirical reference for employee incentives and cost management in enterprise management practice, and further from the perspective of labor cost provides evidence for the empirical support for "green mountains and clear rivers is Jinshan Yinshan".