环境政策不确定性与企业环境信息披露--来自地方环保官员变更的证据

Environmental Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure:Evidence from the Turnover of Local Environmental Protection Directors

地方环保官员变更,既可能致使环境政策更加严格,又可能导致环境政策出现断层,进而对企业环境信息披露产生重要影响。文章基于环境政策不确定性的研究视角,考察了地方环保官员变更对企业环境信息披露的影响。研究发现:地方环保官员变更对企业环境信息披露具有显著的正向影响,且这种正向影响在国有企业与民营企业中没有明显差异,但随着时间的推移,这种正向影响不断下降。进一步的研究发现,在市场化水平较低、监管距离较近与环境绩效较差的企业中,地方环保官员变更对企业环境信息披露的正向影响更显著。最后,文章对上述正向影响的内在机理进行了探讨,发现地方环保官员变更通过发挥约束效应和激励效应促进民营企业环境信息披露,而仅通过发挥约束效应促进国有企业环境信息披露。研究结论从地方环保官员变更的视角拓展了企业环境信息披露的驱动因素研究,为政府相关部门督促企业承担环境治理的主体责任提供了有益启示。

Theoretically,the turnover of local environmental protection directors may not only make the environmental policy stricter and promote corporate environmental information disclosure,but also cause the environmental policy to be broken and inhibit corporate environmental information disclosure. To this end,based on the research perspective of environmental policy uncertainty,this paper selects heavily polluting enterprises in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange A-share from 2009 to 2017 as the research object,and examines the impact of the turnover in local environmental protection directors on corporate environmental information disclosure. The study finds that the turnover in local environmental protection directors has a significant positive impact on corporate environmental information disclosure,and the positive impact is not significantly different between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises,but the positive impact is declining over time. After cross-sectional analysis,it is found that the above-mentioned positive impact is mainly manifested in companies with low levels of marketization,close regulatory distance and poor environmental performance.In other words,when the marketization level is low,the positive impact is more significant,showing that the promotion can effectively compensate for the lack of the market mechanism;when the regulatory distance is long,the positive impact is significantly reduced,indicating that the promotion has a "distance attenuation effect";when the environmental performance is poor,the positive impact is more significant,indicating that this promotion effect is stronger for companies of poor environmental performance. After examining the influence mechanism,it is found that the influence mechanism has heterogeneity of property rights,that is,the turnover of local environmental protection directors promotes the environmental information disclosure of private enterprises by increasing the intensity of environmental regulations and environmental subsidies,but promotes the environmental information disclosure of state-owned enterprises only by improving the intensity of environmental regulations. The conclusions expand the research on the driving factors of corporate environmental information disclosure from the perspective of the turnover of local environmental protection directors,and provide useful enlightenment for the relevant government departments to urge enterprises to assume the main responsibility of environmental governance.