董事高管责任保险能够监督环境治理吗?——基于我国上市公司的经验证据

Can Directors′and Officers′Liability Insurance Supervise Environmental Governance?——Based on the Empirical Evidence of Listed Companies in China

企业环境治理正在成为公司治理研究的新课题。作为公司治理重要机制的董事高管责任保险,能否有效监督企业环境治理迫切需要实证研究回答。本文以2009-2019年A股上市公司为样本,考察公司购买董责险对污染排放行为的影响。研究发现:企业购买董责险后,二氧化硫污染物排放量显著下降,表明董责险能够发挥积极环境治理作用,促进企业污染减排,这一结论在使用工具变量法、PSM等一系列稳健性检验后依然成立;机制检验发现董责险通过强化外部监督提升企业的环境信息披露质量,进而激励企业采取积极的环境治理行为;进一步研究发现,当企业内部治理机制和外部监督机制较为完善时,董责险对企业环境污染治理的促进作用更为明显;当企业面临较高的业绩压力时,董责险可以更有效地促进企业环境污染治理。

Corporate environmental governance has been gradually recognized as a new topic in the corporate governance field.As an important mechanism of corporate governance,whether directors′and officers′liability insurance(D&O insurance)can effectively supervise corporate environmental governance is an important question that needs to be empirically analyzed.This paper used Chinese A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019 as a sample to investigate the impact of D&O insurance on pollution emissions.We find that:(1)the D&O insurance purchase significantly reduces the companies′sulfur dioxide pollutant discharge,indicating that D&O insurance can help to reduce pollution discharge and play a positive role in corporate environmental governance.This conclusion is still robust after a series of robustness tests including the use of instrumental variable method,PSM,etc.;(2)the mechanism test finds that D&O insurance improves environmental information disclosure quality by strengthening external supervision,thereby inspiring the company to take active environmental governance behaviors;(3)further analyses show that the impact of D&O insurance on environmental pollution governance is more pronounced in companies with better internal corporate governance mechanism and external supervision mechanism.When the company faces higher financial performance pressure,D&O insurance can better promote the environmental pollution governance.