| Over the past one hundred years,humans have been over-relying on fossil fuels such as oil and coal in their daily life and in industry.The greenhouse gases(CO2 etc.)from fossil fuel combustion enhance greenhouse effect on the earth and cause global warming.The direct consequence caused by global warming such as species extinction,rising sea levels,melting glaciers,reducing food production and frequent extreme weathers repeatedly warns people: global climate actions are urgently needed!Fortunately,humans have realized the dangers of climate warming and come to an international consensus to deal with global warming,and continuously explore and try all kinds of cooperation mechanisms and action plans to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate global warming.Nearly 200 parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reached a new global climate agreement in Paris,namely the Paris Agreement,On December 12,2015.The agreement further defined the future global climate governance vision as "low carbon and green development",and made more detailed arrangements for global actions on climate change after 2020.The Paris Agreement shows a clear commitment of those countries to develop "low-carbon green economy",and at the same time also sends a clear signal to the world: humans have to go in a way of low carbon and green development in the future.In recent years,our country also has made some positive efforts and exploration in the development of low carbon economy by adjusting the industrial structure,developing clean energy,leading a low-carbon consumption tendency and so on to speed up the shift to a low-carbon economy pattern.While to develop the low carbon economy,we must: first,establish a corresponding carbon disclosure system in the field of accounting to reflect the enterprise's contribution to carbon emission mitigation,energy consumption of carbon emissions and other relevant information.Second,find out the driving factors for enterprises to disclose carbon information.Third,formulate relevant policies and measures to enhance the enthusiasm of enterprises to be involved in carbon disclosure.However there are still not many studies on carbon disclosure in China.Through literature review,we see that prior relevant studies mainly tackled the carbon disclosure framework,the influencing factors of carbon disclosure,the external effect of carbon disclosure,carbon disclosure problems and countermeasures in China,etc.only a few studies explored the influencing factors and influencing mechanism of carbon disclosure from a stakeholder perspective,which provides an opportunity for this study.In this paper,the top 100 biggest listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange are selected as the research object to analyze the current situation of carbon disclosure in China,and the driving effect and action mechanism of various stakeholders on corporate carbon disclosure by using the method of empirical research.The chapters of this study are organized as follows.Chapter one is an introduction to this study.It introduces the research background and significance,related research concepts,research ideas,research methods,research contents and research innovation,etc.Chapter two is a research review of corporate carbon disclosure.The literature related to this study is reviewed and some comments are made in this section.The overseas studies mainly focus on the ways and necessity of carbon disclosure,the status quo of carbon disclosure,the carbon disclosure framework,the motivation and influencing factors of carbon disclosure,the external effect of carbon disclosure,stakeholders and carbon disclosure,etc.Although those studies have obtained some valuable findings,there are still some research unconformity and defects:(1)the way of carbon disclosure is still uncertain.(2)Unified carbon disclosure standards still have not formed.(3)Empirical studies on the motivations and influencing factors of carbon disclosure are mostly based on the data issued by the Carbon Disclosure Project,namely CDP,and do not take into account other carbon disclosure channels.(4)Systematic study on the relationship between various stakeholders and carbon disclosure has not yet been done.Compared with the studies abroad,domestic carbon disclosure related studies start relatively late and backward.Related studies mainly tackle the design of carbon disclosure framework,the influencing factors of carbon disclosure,the external effect of carbon disclosure,the problems and countermeasures of carbon disclosure in China.The mainstream of research gradually shifts from normative research to empirical research.Those studies help us to understand the status quo and problems of carbon disclosure in China,the influencing factors of carbon disclosure,as well as the external effect of carbon disclosure.However due to the lack of standardization in corporate carbon disclosure in China,those empirical research conclusions drawn from Chinese data need further verification.Chapter three is theoretical basis and system background.This section elaborates the relevant theoretical basis and the system background of carbon disclosure at home and abroad.The relevant theoretical basis includes contingency theory,stakeholder theory,legitimacy theory and the theory of signal transmission.The system background covers some carbon disclosure initiatives with significant international influence and their carbon disclosure proposals,some carbon disclosure systems in developed economies,and carbon related policies and practices in China.Chapter four is the measurement of corporate carbon disclosure and the present situation of corporate carbon disclosure in China.This section studies on two problems: the measurement of corporate carbon disclosure and the current situation of corporate carbon disclosure in China.For the measurement of corporate carbon disclosure,the quality of corporate carbon disclosure is defined first,that is,the quality of corporate carbon disclosure is embodied both in the comprehensiveness,relevance and detailedness of disclosed content,and in the diversity of disclosure channels.Based on this understanding,the evaluation indicator system of carbon disclosure quality is built which is composed of 13 tertiary evaluation indicators.The evaluation indicator system can also comprehensively evaluate the quality of corporate carbon disclosure from two aspects: the quality of carbon governance disclosure and the quality of carbon emission disclosure.In the process of indicator measurement,we consider two dimensions: disclosure channels and disclosed contents.We also take into account the weighting of evaluation indicators and use the instrument of entropy weighting to calculate indicator weights,and then combine with the TOPSIS method as a decision analysis method to calculate the evaluation index of carbon disclosure.Finally the effectiveness of the evaluation index of corporate carbon disclosure constructed in this study is verified through a small sample trial.In the part of present situation analysis of corporate carbon disclosure in China,we select the top 100 biggest listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as research object,collect relevant data between year 2012 and 2014,and analyze the current situation in China from two aspects: industry disclosure and item disclosure.Chapter five is an empirical analysis of the impact of various stakeholders on corporate carbon disclosure.We still select the top 100 biggest listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as research object.First,we test how various stakeholders affect corporate carbon disclosure with the whole sample.The stakeholders include government,creditors,customers,shareholders,the media,the auditor and environmental protection organizations.In the test model,we also control some other influencing factors such as financial performance,cross-listing and so on.Then we divide sample companies into two groups according to their company attribute and test how various stakeholders affect corporate carbon disclosure by group.Chapter six is an empirical analysis of the impact of various stakeholders on group indexes of corporate carbon disclosure.First,we test the impact of various stakeholders on carbon governance disclosure and carbon emission disclosure respectively with the whole sample.Then we test the impact of various stakeholders on carbon governance disclosure and carbon emission disclosure respectively with group samples.Chapter seven is conclusion and policy recommendations.In this part we summarize this study,draw some research conclusions and put forth seven policy recommendations and suggestions based on the research conclusions.We also point out the research limitations in this paper and brought forward prospects for future research.Through this empirical study,we get the following conclusions: first,from the point of total average level,the total score of carbon disclosure of listed companies rises year by year,which indicates that the enthusiasm of listed companies to participate in carbon disclosure is getting higher and their consciousness of taking social responsibilities has improved.The level of carbon governance disclosure is significantly higher than that of carbon emission disclosure.In the context of different industries,there is great discrepancy in the levels of carbon disclosure in different industries,which shows that at present the cognition of corporate carbon disclosure in different industries has large deviation.The carbon disclosure level in some industries is not stable,which might be related to the lack of standards on carbon disclosure in China.In terms of specific disclosure items,the comprehensiveness,relevance and detailedness of the disclosed content of each item all have increased.Second,in the condition of the whole sample regression,creditors,customers,the media and the auditor have significant influence on enterprise's carbon disclosure level.Third,in the condition of group sample regressions,shareholders and the auditor have significant impact on the carbon disclosure level of state-owned enterprises,while shareholders,creditors,customers,the auditor and environmental protection organizations have significant influence on the non-state-owned enterprises' carbon disclosure level.Fourth,in the condition of the whole sample regression,creditors,customers,shareholders,the media and the auditor are important factors that affect the level of corporate carbon governance disclosure,while creditors,customers,the media,the auditor and environmental protection organizations are important factors that affect corporate carbon emission disclosure level.Fifth,in the condition of group sample regressions,creditors,shareholders,the auditor and environmental protection organizations are important factors that affect the state-owned enterprises' level of carbon governance disclosure,while creditors and the auditor are important factors that affect the non-state-owned enterprises' level of carbon governance disclosure.Shareholders and the auditor are important factors that affect the state-owned enterprises' level of carbon emission disclosure,while creditors,customers,shareholders,the auditor and environmental protection organizations are important factors that affect the non-state-owned enterprises' level of carbon emission disclosure.The main innovation points of this study are summarized as follows: first,we pay attention to the mechanism of action between various stakeholders and corporate carbon disclosure,which is a relatively new research perspective.Prior studies on corporate carbon disclosure mainly focus on the way of carbon disclosure,the content framework of carbon disclosure,the motivations & influence factors of carbon disclosure and the external effect of carbon disclosure.There is also a small amount of literature studying on corporate carbon disclosure from the angle of individual stakeholders(e.g.,institutional investors),however the research conclusions still need further verification,and such research does not consider the influence of other stakeholders and can't identify the key influencing factors by a comparison with other factors.In this paper,we study on the stakeholder factors which affect corporate carbon disclosure from a systematic perspective,theoretically analyze the impact of various stakeholders on corporate carbon disclosure,empirically test the significance of those influencing factors,and finally find out the key factors that affect corporate carbon disclosure,which could help the public policy makers to create a better disclosure environment and efficiently drive enterprises to disclose carbon information.Second,an improved corporate carbon disclosure quality evaluation system is built to comprehensively measure the carbon disclosure level of enterprises.So far,prior studies on carbon disclosure quality evaluation are still not many.The well-known Carbon Disclosure Project,namely CDP,calculates a CDLI index to evaluate its surveyed companies' carbon disclosure levels,but the index is calculated based on CDP's questionnaire and ignores other disclosure channels and means.In addition,its calculation method is relatively simple without taking into account the weighting problem.Some scholars consider the disclosure channels and means in their construction of carbon disclosure quality evaluation index,but there is still not a uniform definition for the quality of carbon disclosure.In this paper,we define the quality of corporate carbon disclosure first,that is,the quality of corporate carbon disclosure is embodied both in the comprehensiveness,relevance and detailedness of disclosed content,and in the diversity of disclosure channels.Then based on the above understanding,using Freedman & Jaggi(2005,2010),Prado-Lorenzo et al.(2009),Sun Jiakui(2014),Zhao Xuanmin,Sun Wufeng(2015),and other scholars' research results for reference,and considering the carbon disclosure contents proposed by the Carbon Disclosure Project,the Global Reporting Initiative,the Climate Risk Disclosure Initiative and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board,we construct an evaluation indicator system of carbon disclosure quality according to the principles of relevance and reasonability.We also consider the weighting of evaluation indicators and use the entropy weighting method to calculate indicator weights,and then combine with the TOPSIS method as a decision analysis method to calculate the evaluation index of carbon disclosure.Third,first-hand data are used in this study.We collect annual reports,sustainable development reports,corporate social responsibility reports,company website information reports issued by sample companies,and employ a content analysis to manually organize the raw data in these reports and get research data.These data are the first-hand research information.Moreover,the reporting period of our research data is up to the year of 2015.The research data are relatively new and can reflect the latest developments of things. |
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