中国环境信息披露政策是否有效：基于资本市场反应的研究

Abstract

After a long time spent using legal regulation and introducing market-based instruments such as tradable discharge permits and pollution charges for pollution control, western countries have widely adopted environmental information disclosure policies. Environmental information disclosure policies aim to increase public access to environmental information and encourage investors to engage in environmental governance actions. If investors are concerned about firms' environmental performance, providing more firm-specific environmental information may induce them to adjust their investment portfolios in financial markets and then press firms to improve their environmental behaviors. In recent years, China has also adopted environmental governance disclosure policies, and environmental protection departments at all levels release corporate environmental violations within their jurisdictions. Studies show that environmental information disclosure policies in developed countries such as the United States have functioned well to control pollution through the financial market channel. However, there remains a lack of in-depth studies of how China's environmental information disclosure policy has worked and the reasons behind this. Investors' punitive reaction to corporate environmental violation information is the key to the success of disclosure policy through the financial market channel. This paper systematically examines market reactions to the release of corporate environmental violations and the corresponding penalties, and furthermore investigates the institutional and social factors causing the failure of environmental disclosure policies. Our empirical results show that, contrary to practices in developed countries, China's environmental information disclosure policy is basically ineffective through the financial market channel. Further analysis shows that the low environmental responsibility in environmental legislation and the loose enforcement and supervision lead to a low environmental violation cost, which is a primary reason for the failure of the disclosure policy through financial market channels. Using event study methods, we find that due to the generally low environmental penalties, investors do not react significantly when corporate environmental penalties are released. However, we also find that investors' punitive reaction is significantly enhanced along with the improvement of environmental regulation stringency, which increases illegal firms' exposure to environmental risk. Our empirical results confirm that government subsidies obtained by firms to some extent reflect the degree of political connection, and that a political connection can reduce environmental risk due to the protection of the local government by showing that investors' punitive reactions are weakened when firms receive more government subsidies. Finally, we find that some social factors also contribute to the failure of the disclosure policy, including investors' awareness of environmental protection and media coverage on and social attention paid to environmental pollution.