Analyst Site Visits and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure: Evidence from China

Abstract

Compared with developed countries, emerging economy countries are facing more severe environmental challenges. Therefore, effective disclosure of corporate environmental information is an important concern for emerging economies to cope with environmental issues. There is a growing volume of literature documenting that analyst site visits can urge corporations to provide high-quality financial information to investors. However, whether analyst site visits can also improve the quality of environmental information is still unclear. In the Chinese setting, where environmental information has attracted much attention, we explore the interaction between analyst site visits and environmental information disclosure. With three regression methods of the ordinary least squares model, two-stage least square model, and difference-in-difference model, we establish regressions to verify the relationships between them by using empirical data from 2012 to 2019 in China. The results show that analyst site visits are significantly positively correlated with corporate environmental information disclosure. This positive relation is more pronounced when corporations are in economically developed and highly market-oriented areas, in poor air quality areas, and for corporations with good, reasonable internal governance. In addition, we find that analyst site visits affect the quality of environmental information disclosure through the intermediary effect of media attention. In the robustness test, further evidence also indicates that the interaction between analyst site visits and corporate environmental information disclosure was more significant before the COVID-19 lockdown policy was implemented in Wuhan. Our findings suggest that governments should provide support for analysts to conduct site visits and formulate regulations on mandatory disclosure of environmental information by different regions as soon as possible.