Environmental Information Disclosure-Environmental Costs Nexus: Evidence from Heavy Pollution Industry in China

Abstract

Environmental disclosure has gained momentum in the past decades due to increasing pressure from different stakeholders, especially in Chinese practice. In the background, previous research focused on the financial performance of environmental information disclosure, and little literature discussed the nexus between environmental information disclosure and environmental costs. The paper made an initial attempt to link environmental disclosure to different aspects of environmental costs (i.e., quality, enterprise size, market orientation, and ownership) based on 234 listed enterprises of heavy pollution industry from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares in China from 2013 to 2017. The results showed the following: (i) Environmental information disclosure increased environmental costs in the short term, but the long-term effects were not significant; (ii) Enterprise size could weaken the positive impact of environmental information disclosure on environmental costs; (iii) marketization disrupted the positive link between environmental information disclosure and environmental costs; (iv) Enterprise ownership (state-owned vs. private) had an insignificant effect on the environmental information disclosure and environmental costs nexus. This study could identify the causes of inertia in environmental information disclosure from the perspective of environmental costs, so as to provide practical guidance for activating the initiative of corporate environmental information disclosure.