Analysis of Stock Market Opening and Environment Protecting Information with Computational Technologies: Evidence from China

Abstract

Stock market plays a leading and crucial role in the market mechanism, which connects the savers and investors. So far, there is no uniform regulation on the disclosure requirement of environmental protection information in China. But companies are increasingly concerned about environmental protection and are committed to disclosing more information about environmental protection. It is important to analyze the information on stock market opening and environmental protection by computing technology. For the stock market, as voluntary disclosure of non-financial information, environmental protection information is an important supplement to financial information and is essential for the investors to make decisions. And it is the important content of capital market information. This article through the capital market opening opportunity: Shanghai (Shenzhen) Hong Kong stock connect (the stock market opening mentioned later in this paper all refers to the Shanghai (Shenzhen) Hong Kong stock connect), empirically investigates the stock market opening that affects the environmental protection information disclosure of the company. Our conclusion supports the views that the stock market opening improved the environmental protection information disclosure of the company and promotes the environmental protection behavior of enterprises. Through further analysis, this paper finds that after the officially carried out the stock market opening policy, the attention of many analysts and the participation of foreign institutional investors urge the management to take the initiative to reduce agency costs, which is an important influence mechanism for the stock market opening to affect the disclosure of enterprises’ environmental protection information. The evidence of this study indicates that the stock market opening has an important impact on enterprises in China from the following aspects: improving the information disclosure of environmental protection, thus enhancing the company’s awareness of environment protecting, and improving the information quality of stock market in China.