Corporate Environmental Performance in China: The Moderating Effects of the Media versus the Approach of Local Governments.

Zhiru Guo,Chao Lu

doi:10.3390/ijerph18010150

Abstract

This article selects the listed companies in China’s A-share heavy pollution industry from 2014 to 2018 as samples, uses a random effect model to empirically test the relationship between media attention and corporate environmental performance and examines the impacts of local government environmental protection and property nature on that relationship. Results are as follow: (1) Media attention can significantly affect a company’s environmental performance. The higher the media attention, the greater the company’s supervision and the better its environmental performance. (2) In areas where the government pays less attention to environmental protection, the impact of media on corporate environmental performance is more obvious, but in other areas, the impact of media on environmental performance cannot be reflected; (3) The media attention is very significant for the environmental performance improvement of state-owned enterprises, and it is not obvious in non-state-owned enterprises. (4) A further breakdown of the study found that the role of media attention in corporate environmental performance is only significant in the sample of local governments that have low environmental protection and are state-owned enterprises. This research incorporates the local government’s emphasis on environmental protection into the research field of vision, expands the research scope of media and corporate environmental performance, and also provides new clues and evidence for promoting the active fulfillment of environmental protection responsibilities by companies and local governments.

Highlights

In recent years, an increasing number of people have suffered from air pollution and the plastic products pollution of the ocean and land has become more severe
This article selects the listed companies in China’s A-share heavy pollution industry from 2014 to 2018 as samples, and uses a random effect model to empirically test the relationship between media attention and corporate environmental performance, and analyse the impacts of local government environmental protection and property nature on that relationship
Combining the theoretical basis of the previous literature, this paper confirms that media attention has the effect of affecting corporate environmental performance through empirical methods, and further enriches the research on the role of media in corporate governance

Summary

Introduction

An increasing number of people have suffered from air pollution and the plastic products pollution of the ocean and land has become more severe. The world environmental pollution situation is not optimistic, and environmental governance has become a global problem that needs to be solved urgently. Among the countries that are striving for development with environmental protection, China’s green development process is remarkable: The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the concept of “ecological civilization construction” and formed a “five-in-one”. General layout (the term “five in one general layout” refers to the five-in-one integration of economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction and ecological civilization construction, and comprehensive progress), aiming to take into account the ecological governance work such as resource conservation and environmental protection in the development process. In 2014, China promulgated the new “Environmental Protection Law”, which intensifies the punishment of environmental violations, gives the environmental protection department more powers, and require companies to disclose pollutant emission information.

Methods

Results

Conclusion