Examining the relationship between intellectual capital and performance of listed environmental protection companies

Abstract

Environmental deterioration from industrial development in mainland China has become a focus for public concern. The emerging environmental protection (EP) industry has become prominent recently because it has set high standards for technology and equipment, and has been tasked to provide solutions to difficult environmental problems. In this paper we looked at the performance of the EP industry using econometric software, intellectual capital architecture and data collected from 35 Chinese enterprises for 2010 through 2014. Intellectual capital (IC) is subdivided into human capital (HC), innovation capital (INC) and structure capital (SC). Using the Value Added Intellectual Capital coefficient (VAIC), we have built a multiple regression model to explore the relationship between the performance of IC and EP. We found that while the human and structural components of IC exert a significant positive influence on enterprise performance, innovation capital does not. We have offered suggestions for performance improvements to the EP industry through IC management. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1056–1066, 2017