Does carbon emission of firms matter for Bank loans decision? Evidence from China

Abstract

In the context of global climate governance, greater carbon emissions of enterprises often result in a higher potential risk of environmental violations. Taking the non-financial companies listed in China from 2008 to 2018 as research samples, this paper empirically examined the impact of firm carbon emission on their acquisition of new bank loans and its mechanism of action. This paper empirically finds that if the carbon emission of an enterprise is higher, it will be granted with less new bank loans. The results remain robust after pairing analysis and instrumental variable analysis. The mechanism analysis shows that corporate credit rating plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between corporate carbon emission and new bank loans. Carbon emission leads to the improvement of earnings management of enterprises and the significant decline in the conservatism and comparability of accounting information, which is likely to be an important channel for the reduction of corporate bank loans. Upon further analysis, we find that the carbon emission of enterprises will not significantly affect the cost of acquiring bank loans, but it will significantly reduce the loan term structure. The cross-sectional analysis shows that the effect of carbon emission on new bank loans is more obvious in state-owned listed enterprises, enterprises with high internal control quality and enterprises with strong environmental law enforcement. The research results of this paper enrich the research on the economic consequences of carbon emission, reveal the implementation effect of green credit policies, provide empirical evidence for bank credit to play a role in green governance, and promote enterprises to actively reduce carbon emission.