Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure Research Based On Environmental Performance Evaluation

It has been more than 20 years since the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) first proposed "sustainable development"in 1987. How to guide the daily business activities of corporate into the path of sustainable development? Western experts agree that such environment accounting-based "(Environmental Information) data is more effective than the control regulations for 20 years in reducing pollution," "it is the Third Wave in the history of mankind environmental protection following the mandatory control measures and market economy means" (Tietenberg, 1998).Based on this consensus, some well-known enterprises of the developed countries began to introduce environmental accounting consciously in the early 90s of the last century and applied environmental information disclosure to practice as early as possible, which has become a widely used tool for corporate environmental management in the world so far. In order to promote the application of environmental accounting and information disclosure in various countries, international organizations and developed countries have issued a wide range of business environment norms or guidelines designed to regulate environmental accounting and information disclosure ,playing an important role in promoting the development of environmental information disclosure. However, these norms or guidelines are in the background of developed countries, considering little developing countries, especially our country's compression-type environment question caused by the compression-based economy that our country has completed the developed countries' one century industrialization in 20 years.Aiming the serious environmental problems caused by China's rapid economic development, the academic began to introduce and study the environmental accounting and disclosure issues since the last century 90's and has published a large number of relevant research results. The results exist of two defects because of a variety of reasons: First, the majority emphasize on qualitative and policy analysis and the small number of empirical researches (survey, statistical analysis, sample analysis, etc.) focus on the heavy pollution in a particular industry, lack integrity and universality. Second, there are no environmental factors in the financial performance evaluation system and no integration of environmental performance and financial results.For these reasons, this paper studies China's corporate environment information disclosure issues in the title of "Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure Research Based on Environmental Performance Evaluation".The text follows the logical framework of "Theory - The present situation - Design -The proposition" and is divided into eight chapters except the Introduction. The first and second chapters are the theoretical study, the third and fourth chapters are the present situation study, the following three chapters are the enterprise environmental information disclosure system design based on the environmental performance evaluation and the last Chapter is the problems and suggestions. The main contents of the various chapters are as follows:Chapter 1 discusses the relationship between sustainable development and accounting. Sustainable development is not only a scientific outlook on development, but also one of the basic assumptions of accounting; The basic functions of accounting are calculation and supervision, so the environmental calculation and monitoring belong to the accounting. Implementing the sustainable development concept, we must promote and develop environmental accounting.Chapter 2 discusses a group of related concept and support theory. The group of concept include environmental activities, environmental governance, environmental performance, environmental information disclosure; Based on the environment performance definition of Yang Dongning of Nankai University ,the paper extends the traditional areas of environmental performance to combine with the environment information disclosure ,setting the theoretical foundation for the environmental performance disclose model. The group of theory is the scarcity of environmental resources, environmental accountability, information asymmetry, environmental externalities and environmental control; Scarcity of resources is the prerequisite for the environmental information disclosure, accountability is the cause, asymmetries and externalities is the basis and control is the necessary means.Chapter 3 discusses the research and practice on the issue of corporate environmental information disclosure of the relevant international organizations and developed countries. The text sums up the experience and enlightenment in implementation of information disclosure in China through the introduction of research, promotion and implementation on the environmental information disclosure of United Nations Commission on International Accounting and Reporting Standards intergovernmental working group of experts, the Global Reporting Initiative and the United States, Japan, Denmark.Chapter 4 discusses the environment information disclosure situation in our country. In this paper, we study in three areas: the environmental information disclosure standard, the environmental information disclosure research, the environmental information disclosure application. It shows that the standard is not perfect, the research has not gone far enough and the application is still in the initial stage.Chapter 5 discusses the basic design of corporate environmental information disclosure program based on the environmental performance evaluation. The paper takes account of the six factors impacting the environmental information disclosure in China and suggests the environmental information disclosure program combining environmental performance with financial results.Chapter 6 discusses the environmental performance indicators on the extended the concept of environmental performance.Chapter 7 discusses the environment information disclosure model choice. The text studies the way of environmental information disclosure, the contents of the system, third-party authentication, punishment and incentive mechanisms.Chapter 8 gives a rational forecast of the major problems encountered and the expected economic consequences when enterprises implement environmental information disclosure in China. This paper shows relevant recommendations from both the macro and micro aspects, in the central of perfection of the enterprise environmental information governance mechanism.Overall, the full text runs through the sustainable development and the scientific development and put forward to environment information disclosure model in the core of environmental performance evaluation, ith environmental performance and environmental information disclosure research as basic, nvironmental performance as the core, the environment information disclosure as the main framework, he combination of environmental performance and financial results as the technology, he improve of the micro-enterprises environment governance mechanisms as the aim.This paper innovates mainly in the following three aspects:(1) The paper studies China's listed companies environmental information disclosure situation in a longer range (8 years, previous studies for 3 years) using associated research, elated with China's economic development level and environmental pollution level. It has shown that the level of economic development is the important factor affecting the extent of environmental information disclosure.(2) In reference of the existing research results, the paper puts forward to the corporate environmental information disclosure mode based on environmental performance evaluation. With the ground of the current environment report, it expands the original concept of environmental performance, puts the environmental impact of enterprise activities and the financial impact of environmental activities together into the area of "environmental performance", designs a reasonable way to combine the business environment performance and financial performance evaluation through the choice of environmental performance indicators.(3) Predict logically on China's implementation problems of enterprise environmental information disclosure and the economic consequences, then make 10 recommendations.