Carbon Information Disclosure Research Articles

Corrigendum: How do independent directors view carbon information disclosure? Evidence from China

Corrigendum: How do independent directors view carbon information disclosure? Evidence from China

Research on influencing factors of carbon information disclosure quality in China's power industry.

High-quality carbon information disclosure is required with the development of China's national carbon emission trading market. It is still controversial what factors influence carbon information disclosure quality in China's power industry. This paper involved four factors: government regulation, media reports, enterprise size, and directors' professional backgrounds based on strategic change theory. The carbon information disclosure quality was measured using the analytic hierarchy process (APH) and entropy weight method (EWM). Then, panel data regression was used to analyze the relationship between the factors and carbon information disclosure quality. The results showed that (1) the quantity of media reports has no significant correlation with carbon information disclosure quality. (2) The proportion of directors with legal backgrounds to all directors is significantly and negatively correlated with carbon information disclosure quality. (3) Government regulation, the media value orientation, enterprise size, and the proportion of directors with accounting backgrounds to all directors are significantly and positively related to the carbon information disclosure quality.

Study of Carbon Disclosure and Its Differences Between Different Countries Based on the Case of Energy Company Shell

Low carbon sustainable development is a popular issue in contemporary economic development, after the Kyoto agreement was signed, various countries around the world invested in the establishment of a carbon trading market and the system of carbon information disclosure system. For the research on carbon information disclosure, the current researchers focus more on accounting issues such as how to recognize and measure, however, there is a lack of uniform regulations on how to disclose carbon information for multinational enterprises. Therefore, this article takes Shell as an example to investigate the differences in carbon information disclosure standards between China and the UK by analyzing the differences between its carbon information disclosure in the UK and China. It is discovered that China is in the initial stage of establishing both the carbon market and carbon information disclosure, while the UK, as a developed country, has formed a relatively perfect carbon information disclosure system, in addition to the different attitudes of Chinese and foreign media. In order to establish a comprehensive carbon information disclosure standard in China, government policies, media support and corporate actions are needed to eliminate the inequality of carbon information disclosure among multinational companies.

Do you know Company Value? It's Depend on Accounting Disclosure and Performance Environment: Evidence from Indonesian Country

This research is important to do to find out the factors that affect the firm value. Therefore, researchers want to examine the effect of ADCE and environmental performance on firm value. Researchers used the 2016 GRI standards to measure environmental performance. The results of this study are expected to add/strengthen empirical evidence regarding legitimacy theory and the triple bottom line concept as well as deepen knowledge about what factors can affect firm value, which can be used as additional references for research. in the future and hopes to add to the company's initiatives in preserving the environment. This study provides the following conclusions accounting disclosure Carbon emissions have a negative effect on firm value and environmental performance has a positive effect on firm value. This means that if the environmental performance of a company is getting better, it can increase the value of the company because investors will give a positive response by buying company shares so that it can increase share prices which have implications for increasing company value. For the government, if ADCE is made as a regulation, what must be considered is to provide a third party as a verifier in the calculation of carbon emissions so that the ADCE disclosed by the company can be trusted. For companies, if they want to disclose carbon information voluntarily, it is better to choose which information should be disclosed.

Voluntary Carbon Disclosure (VCD) Strategy under the Korean ETS: With the Interaction among Carbon Performance, Foreign Sales Ratio and Media Visibility.

While there has been a sufficient amount of research and empirical evidence on the factors that influence a company’s decisions to voluntarily disclose carbon information, little research has been done on the carbon disclosure practices of ETS-affected companies, in Asian countries, in particular. Considering this, it is essential to shed light on more diverse linkages between carbon performance and voluntary carbon disclosure (VCD) under ETSs taking into account the specific context of each individual country. Drawing on the Korean ETS-affected companies with a contents analysis of their sustainable reports from 2015 to 2019, the present research seeks to address the existing knowledge gaps in the current literature on carbon disclosure. In doing so, hierarchical ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis is used to infer causality and assess the findings. The findings empirically prove a positive relationship between carbon performance and VCD, which means that the affected companies under the Korean ETS are likely to disclose more when they have favorable carbon reduction performance. Furthermore, this link tends to be amplified for companies with a high percentage of foreign sales, while the role of media visibility interacts differently with carbon performance in influencing VCD.

Carbon trading market policies and corporate environmental performance in China

As an important practical exploration of energy saving and emission reduction through market mechanism, carbon emission trading market has important theoretical and practical significance on the impact of environmental performance of enterprises. This paper examines the impact of carbon market policy initiation and its improvement on corporate environmental performance. We found that: first, carbon market policy initiation can effectively improve corporate environmental performance; second, the impact of the degree of perfection of carbon market policy on corporate environmental performance has a threshold effect, and the optimal carbon market policy has a perfection interval of [0.723–0.758]; third, both internal corporate governance and corporate carbon information disclosure can form a synergistic effect with carbon market policy to promote corporate environmental performance improvement; fourth, the heterogeneity test shows that the carbon market policy has a more significant effect on the environmental performance improvement of low-cost transfer capability enterprises, high-energy-consuming enterprises and private enterprises. The findings of this paper provide new ideas to further promote the construction of governments carbon market and improve the environmental performance of enterprises.

Impact of Carbon Information on Enterprise Value: Analysis Model Design Based on Big Data

Investors pay more and more attention to the issue of climate change information disclosure of listed companies. Whether the company can effectively deal with the impact of climate change on its own operations and make reasonable information disclosure will undoubtedly affect the value of the enterprise. Aiming at this, an analysis model based on big data is designed for the impact of carbon information on enterprise value. This study selects the sample stocks of the Shanghai Stock Exchange responsibility index every year as the research sample, counts the carbon information through the social responsibility reports of listed companies, and uses the index method to score the carbon information of each company to measure the quality of carbon information disclosure. Firstly, it analyzes the situation of carbon information disclosure in China through descriptive statistics and then constructs relevant models to conduct an empirical analysis on the impact of carbon information disclosure on enterprise value.

Carbon information disclosure quality, greenwashing behavior, and enterprise value.

As global warming becomes increasingly prominent, countries worldwide advocate for a low-carbon economy to cope with the pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Chinese government has proposed a “dual carbon” goal of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060. The disclosure of carbon information by Chinese enterprises has attracted widespread attention from society. This study selects the constituents of the Social Responsibility Index of China Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2020 as samples to empirically analyze the relationship between the level of carbon information disclosure and corporate value, and the moderating effect of greenwashing behavior. Results indicated that the quality of carbon disclosure is positively correlated with the enterprise value. Greenwashing behavior promotes the positive impact of carbon disclosure quality on enterprise value in the short run, but this promoting effect fades in the long run. We further found that the carbon information disclosure of non-heavy-pollution enterprises has a more obvious positive impact on enterprise value than that of heavily polluting enterprises. Additionally, the positive impact of carbon information disclosure on enterprise value is more visible among enterprises in a good legal environment than those in a poor legal environment. This study enriches the relevant literature on carbon information disclosure and enterprise “greenwashing” behavior and has practical significance for promoting China’s low-carbon development in the context of ecological civilization and improving the enthusiasm for the quality of enterprise carbon information disclosure.

Corporate Carbon Information Disclosure and Financing Costs: The Moderating Effect of Sustainable Development

With the Global Reporting Initiative (a provider of the global best practice for impact reporting) systematically helping parties to understand and exchange issues such as climate change and formulating authoritative sustainability reporting guidelines, corporate sustainable development is becoming more and more critical for companies. Moreover, corporate carbon information disclosure has the potential to promote corporate financing after the Green Climate Fund has been playing their part in climate finance. Previous studies focused more on the cost of equity. Considering the volatility of the capital market, the cost of equity financing is more unstable and complex. This study limited the financing cost to the cost of debt, took Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2021 as a research sample, and explored the relationship between corporate carbon information disclosure, sustainable development, and financing costs. This study adopted fixed-effects (within) regression or random-effects GLS regression (defined through the Breusch and Pagan Lagrange multiplier test for random effects and the Hausman test) as estimation methods to control individual effects and endogenous problems brought by time. At the same time, the model was modified when there was heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation accordingly. The results show that the more carbon information disclosure, the lower the financing cost; sustainable development weakens the inhibitory effect of carbon information disclosure on financing costs. This study affirms the financing value of reducing information asymmetry, and found that sustainable development (internal growth capacity) may increase the cost of debt. The stronger the sustainable development is, the more financing needs may be, thus raising the cost of debt. This study not only implies that creditors may attach importance to the value of carbon information disclosure at the time of borrowing, but also provides theoretical evidence for the government or securities regulators to speed up the mandatory carbon information disclosure.

Effect Analysis of Carbon Information on Enterprise Value Based on Big Data

An effect analysis approach of carbon information on enterprise value based on big data is proposed. This study first systematically expounds on the sources of research data and data collection methods and then comprehensively analyzes corporate carbon information disclosure status and characteristics. It also conducts an empirical study on the short-term impact of carbon information disclosure on corporate value creation and draws the following conclusions. Industry classification has an important impact on corporate carbon information disclosure in terms of the status and characteristics of corporate carbon information disclosure. Except for the financial and insurance industry, the average amount of carbon information disclosure in susceptible sectors such as the extractive industry and construction industry is relatively high. In terms of carbon information disclosure content, the carbon information disclosed by enterprises is mainly related to low-carbon technology and low-carbon product plans. Through empirical analysis of the impact of carbon information disclosure on short-term stock market performance and investor returns, it is found that the trading volume and value of stocks in the 5 trading days after the information event were higher than those in the previous 5 trading days. Still, the increase in the overall stock market value was not significant. This shows that the occurrence of carbon information disclosure events can improve the liquidity and trading activity of the stock market, trigger the stock market’s market response to carbon information disclosure, and enable investors to obtain more abnormal returns among short-term investors. It has a certain impact on short-term enterprise value creation.

Carbon disclosure: A legitimizing tool or a governance tool? Evidence from listed US companies

AbstractWe study the motivations behind and consequences of firms disclosing carbon information. Specifically, we explain the bidirectional relationship between carbon disclosure and carbon performance and examine whether carbon disclosure is used as a legitimizing tool or a governance tool. We analyze carbon emissions and disclosure data from 2012 to 2015 for a sample of S&P 500 companies. After addressing issues of endogeneity, our findings support legitimacy theory and suggest that firms tend to greenwash carbon information and use carbon disclosure as a legitimizing tool. In particular, managers strategically select particular types of carbon information to disclose to the public. Our findings also indicate that firms in low‐carbon sectors tend to use disclosure as a governance tool rather than a legitimizing tool, suggesting that firms in high carbon intensity sectors are likely to face serious legitimacy anxiety, and have stronger reasons to manage their green image. Implications of our empirical evidence for managers, investors, and policymakers are explored.

Study on the Relevance of Internal Legal System Environment, Format Guidelines and Carbon Information Disclosure

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between the internal legal system environment, disclosure format guidelines issued by China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and carbon information disclosure, using Shanghai A-share industrial enterprises from 2018 to 2021 as the research samples. The results of the study show that the overall level of carbon information disclosure is low and varies greatly among enterprises, that a sound internal legal system environment can improve the level of carbon information disclosure, and that there is a significant positive relationship between the extent to which the disclosure format guidelines issued by the SFC are complete and the level of carbon information disclosure. The study confirms the importance of the internal and external systems of companies, and provides reference for the study of the factors influencing the level of carbon information disclosure.

Quality evaluation of carbon information disclosure of public companies in China's electric power sector based on ANP-Cloud model

Chinese electric power sector (EPS) contributes 52% of China's total CO2 emissions. Given the severe global warming situation, carbon information disclosed by Chinese electric power enterprises (EPEs) has received extensive attention. Therefore, to understand the current level of carbon information disclosure (CID) in EPS and improve the CID quality, this paper evaluates the CID quality of public companies in the EPS. Based on the characteristics of the EPEs, this paper established a CID quality evaluation system from five aspects: integrity, relevance, reliability, comprehensibility, and comparability. An ANP-Cloud model is employed to evaluate the CID quality of 62 public companies in China's EPS. The analytic network process (ANP) method can quantify the correlation among evaluation indexes. The Cloud model achieves the transformation from qualitative evaluation to quantitative scoring with consideration of the uncertainty and fuzziness of the expert's evaluation language. The integration of two models, therefore, improves the comprehensiveness and objectiveness of the evaluation results. The evaluation results indicate that: (1) “Carbon emissions”, “Carbon emission reduction targets” and “Independent chapter” indexes disclosed by the EPEs have a significant impact on CID quality. (2) The CID quality of the entire EPS public companies is low. The carbon information disclosed by EPEs cannot effectively represent the carbon management behavior of enterprises. (3) From the internal perspective of the EPS, the CID quality of thermal enterprises is relatively high, while hydropower enterprises are relatively low. Finally, this paper proposes viable suggestions to improve the CID quality from three aspects: EPEs, government, and public monitoring.

The impacts of carbon emissions and voluntary carbon disclosure on firm value.

Investors and other stakeholders are starting to pay attention to firms' carbon emissions and carbon disclosure. This study investigated the effects of voluntary carbon disclosure information and carbon emissions on firm value from listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 (CSI 300) Index. We also apply the Probit model to predict the probability of voluntary carbon disclosure information. The results indicate that the increase in carbon emissions has a negative impact on firm value. The action that companies select to disclose carbon emissions has a positive impact on firm value. The effect of leverage ratio on VCDI is increasing year by year. What is more, the probability of the average size firm carbon disclosure was 30.73% in 2020. Company management needs to pay attention to the risks caused by carbon emissions and ensure the quality of carbon disclosure information, especially the authenticity and reliability of the information.

How do Independent Directors View Carbon Information Disclosure? Evidence From China

This study examines the effect of independent directors on carbon information disclosure (CID) in China from 2011 to 2017. Additionally, this study investigates the effect of independent director’s attributes (gender, academic experience, and political connection) on the CID. To test our hypothesis, we collected data of 511 Chinese listed firms. The empirical results show that independent directors have a positive influence on the CID. Moreover, the independent female directors, independent academic directors and independent politically connected directors also enhances the CID. Our findings offer shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders an integrating perspective on motivating firms to disclose high quality carbon information.

A Study on the Impact of Institutional Pressure on Carbon Information Disclosure: The Mediating Effect of Enterprise Peer Influence.

Enterprises should bear the main responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. Disclosing carbon emission information is one of the important ways for enterprises to deal with climate change. Taking China’s A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2018 as the research sample, we study the impact of external explicit institutional pressure and implicit institutional pressure on corporate carbon information disclosure and analyze the mediating effect of enterprise peer influence in carbon disclosure. The empirical results show that external institutional pressure, namely environmental regulation and Confucian culture, has a significant positive impact on enterprise carbon information disclosure. Enterprise peer influence has a certain mediating effect between external institutional pressure and carbon information disclosure. The government should formulate and improve the carbon information disclosure institution and strengthen external supervision through the joint participation of all sectors of society.

Establishment of Corporate Energy Management Systems and Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure in Chinese Listed Companies: The Moderating Role of Corporate Leaders’ Low-Carbon Awareness

The “Energy-Saving and Low-Carbon Action Implementation Plan for Ten Thousand Enterprises” urged Chinese energy users to establish an energy management system (EEM) that emphasizes energy conservation and emission reduction. This study applied the voluntary information disclosure theory, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy theory to construct a research framework for corporate voluntary carbon information disclosure (CID) under combined action of disclosure decision, EEM related to carbon information collection, and pressure to disclose. This study uses A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2017 as its research sample. Panel data regression analyses show that EEM positively affects CID in the high-carbon industry, and LLA positively affects CID in the low-carbon industry. In addition, ownership concentration has significant effects on CID. Moreover, the existence of state-owned shares positively affects CID of AH-share samples. The moderating effect test found that LLA has a negative moderating effect (a positive moderating effect) on the relationship between EEM and CID in the high-carbon industry (in AH-share samples). This study has verified the promoting effect of energy policies implementation related to carbon reduction and leaders’ carbon awareness on CID. It provided a strong basis for the significance of accelerating climate-change policies and promotion effects of international capital markets.

Environmental legitimacy pressure, political connection and impression management of carbon information disclosure

Using sample firms from eight energy-intensive industries included in the State Council of China’s Notice on the Pilot Work of Carbon Emission Trading from 2015 to 2019, this study examines the relationship between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure, and explores the moderating effect of political connection on this relationship. The baseline results show that environmental legitimacy pressure is positively associated with impression management of carbon information disclosure, and political connection moderates this relationship, that is, the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in politically-connected firms is stronger than that in non-politically-connected firms. The results are robust to various sensitivity tests. Further analyses show that (i) the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in non-state owned enterprises (non-SOEs) is stronger than that in SOEs, (ii) firms facing higher negative environmental legitimacy pressure have stronger motivation to conduct impression management of carbon information disclosure, (iii) firms facing environmental legitimacy pressure conduct both selective disclosure and expressive manipulation but they have stronger motivation to conduct expressive manipulation. This study extends the literature on impression management of carbon information disclosure. The findings in this study provide policy implications not only for China but also for countries with large carbon emission.

Research on the Current Situation of Carbon Disclosure of Chinese Listed Companies under the Dual Carbon Target

With the proposal of the "dual carbon" target, carbon emission has become the focus, and the requirement of carbon disclosure for enterprises has come. At present, there are still a few listed companies that disclose carbon information in China, and there is no unified way of disclosure, and the content of carbon disclosure is lack of consistency. Therefore, it is urgent to raise the awareness of carbon disclosure among enterprises and increase the number of disclosing enterprises by improving the awareness of social responsibility and mandatory disclosure requirements. The carbon disclosure reports will be more comparable by standardizing carbon disclosure requirements, unifying channels and formats. The quality and reliability of carbon disclosure will be increased by building a reasonable evaluation system and implementing effective supervision policies.

Corporate Energy Management and Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure in China

Corporate Energy Management and Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure in China