Research On The Influence Of Social Culture On Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure

Enterprise environmental information disclosure is of great significance to the national strategy of environmental protection and environmental governance.Through the disclosure of corporate environmental information,the public can understand the degree of implementation of corporate environmental responsibility,and corporate environmental information disclosure is an important channel for the public to understand the implementation of corporate environmental responsibility.With the sustainable development of social economy and the improvement of the quality of life,the public pays more and more attention to the performance of corporate environmental responsibility and corporate environmental information disclosure.In order to promote enterprise environmental information disclosure,regulatory authorities have promulgated a series of laws and regulations on enterprise environmental information disclosure,such as the Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China,on the principles and contents of environmental information disclosure.Academia has done a lot of research on the influencing factors and economic consequences of enterprise environmental information disclosure,which has promoted the enterprise environmental information disclosure.However,there are still some practical conditions in corporate environmental information disclosure,such as emphasizing quantity over quality and the low overall level of corporate environmental information disclosure,which is difficult to meet the social expectations of corporate environmental information disclosure.In the face of the higher and higher social expectations of corporate environmental information disclosure and the institutional and theoretical research status of corporate environmental information disclosure,enterprises also need to understand the practical significance of environmental information disclosure.In fact,the disclosure of enterprise environmental information,which reflects the negative externality of the enterprise,is inevitably affected by the external specific institutional environment,by the public's collective social cognition of environmental issues,social behavior norms and customs and other social and cultural influence.Different social cultures constitute different social expectations of corporate environmental information disclosure,giving different social pressure and organizational legitimacy pressure on corporate environmental information disclosure;different social cultures form different levels of social trust due to different social behavior norms and customs,which affect the corresponding corporate environmental information disclosure of the return of organizational legitimacy and the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Through social expectation and the level of social trust,social culture affects the return of organizational legitimacy of corporate environmental information disclosure and the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Because of the close relationship between social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure and the implementation of the national strategy of environmental protection and environmental governance,the research on the impact of social culture on corporate environmental information disclosure has certain practical and theoretical significance.However,the existing literature pays less attention to the specific relationship between social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure.In addition,as a strategic project,enterprise environmental information disclosure is an investment choice of enterprises.Whether enterprises disclose environmental information disclosure and which environmental information is disclosed is the implementation of investment options for environmental information disclosure,which endows enterprises with different option values for environmental information disclosure.Whether the enterprise carries on the environmental information disclosure or not and the quality of the enterprise environmental information disclosure have different influence on the enterprise growth opportunity and the enterprise option value.In different social and cultural system environments,the option value given to enterprises by corporate environmental information disclosure is different.In view of this,taking the enterprise environmental information disclosure as the research object,on the basis of organizational legitimacy theory,environmental ethics theory,embeddedness theory and information asymmetry theory,and drawing lessons from Kroeber and Kluckhohn's social culture theory,the social culture is divided into the social value culture that reflects the social members' views on some universal social problems and the social structure culture that reflects the norms and customs of daily social behavior.This paper theoretically expounds the mechanism of the influence of social value culture and social structure culture on corporate environmental information disclosure and the mechanism of social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure on the value of corporate options,and establishes the theoretical analysis framework of "social culture-corporate environmental information disclosure".Taking the Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China which was implemented in 2015 as the time starting point,the small and medium-sized board listed companies from 2015 to 2018 are selected as the research samples,and the enterprise environmental information disclosure level index of the sample companies is obtained by text analysis.Multiple regression analysis,questionnaire survey and factor analysis are used to test the influence of social value culture and social structure culture on corporate environmental information disclosure and the impact of social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure on the value of corporate options.Deepen the depth of the research through further analysis,and ensure the stability of the research conclusions through endogenous test and robustness test.First of all,based on Hofstede's theory of social value culture,this paper uses VSM2013 questionnaire to obtain the social value culture index of provincial administrative regions,and empirically tests the influence of social value culture on the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure from four dimensions: power distance,collectivism,masculinity and uncertainty avoidance.Secondly,based on Fei Xiaotong's theory of differential order pattern,a questionnaire on social structure culture is designed to obtain the social structure culture index of provincial administrative regions.This paper makes an empirical test on the influence of social structure culture on the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure from the difference order pattern social structure culture,family-oriented social structure culture,human-oriented social structure culture and enwei-oriented social structure culture.Thirdly,combined with social value culture and social structure culture,this paper makes an empirical test on the comprehensive impact of social value culture and social structure culture on the level of corporate environmental information disclosure;finally,from the perspective of corporate option value,this paper makes an empirical test on the impact of social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure on corporate option value.The study found that:First,social value culture affects enterprise environmental information disclosure.Power distance significantly reduces the level of corporate environmental information disclosure,masculinity and uncertainty avoidance significantly improve the level of corporate environmental information disclosure,but collectivism does not significantly affect the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Compared with the non-low-carbon pilot provinces,the power distance and collectivism of the low-carbon pilot provinces reduce the level of corporate environmental information disclosure to a greater extent,and masculine temperament increases the level of corporate environmental information disclosure to a greater extent.Compared with Putonghua dialect area,the power distance of non-Putonghua dialect area reduces the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure to a greater extent,and uncertainty avoidance increases the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure to a higher degree.Further analysis shows that right distance significantly reduces the level of hard disclosure of environmental information,masculinity and uncertainty avoidance significantly increase the level of hard disclosure of environmental information,but collectivism and masculinity significantly increase the level of soft disclosure of environmental information.The types of audit opinions such as qualified opinions and the remuneration of board members significantly reduce the degree of reduction of power distance to the level of corporate environmental information disclosure and the degree of uncertainty avoidance to the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.The results of endogenous test show that there is no endogenesis in the significant impact of power distance,masculinity and uncertainty avoidance on the level of environmental information disclosure.The robustness test results of changing the social value culture and the measurement level of corporate environmental information disclosure show,that the significant impact of power distance,masculine temperament and uncertainty avoidance on the level of corporate environmental information disclosure remains unchanged.Second,the social structure culture of the differential order pattern affects the disclosure of enterprise environmental information.There is a significant negative correlation between the social structure culture of differential order pattern and the level of corporate environmental information disclosure,and a significant positive correlation between family-oriented social structure culture and the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Human-oriented social structure culture and enwei-oriented social structure culture are significantly negatively correlated with the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Compared with the non-low-carbon pilot provinces,the difference order social structure culture of low-carbon pilot provinces has a higher degree of reduction in the level of corporate environmental information disclosure,while the family-oriented social structure culture has a lower degree of increase in the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Compared with provincial administrative regions with higher level of university education,provincial administrative regions with lower level of university education have a higher degree of reduction in the level of corporate environmental information disclosure than provincial administrative regions with lower level of university education,social structure culture of human orientation,social structure culture of human orientation and social structure culture of grace orientation.Further analysis shows that the difference order pattern social structure culture,human orientation social structure culture and grace orientation social structure culture significantly reduce the level of enterprise hard disclosure environmental information,family oriented social structure culture significantly increases the level of enterprise hard disclosure environmental information,and human orientation social structure culture significantly reduces the level of enterprise soft disclosure environmental information.The types of audit opinions such as qualified opinions and the remuneration of board members reduce the level of corporate environmental information disclosure caused by the culture of social structure of differential order and the culture of social structure of human orientation and that of social structure of grace orientation.It improves the degree to which the family-oriented social structure culture increases the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.The results of endogenous test show that there are no endogenous problems in the significant influence of differential order pattern social structure culture,family-oriented social structure culture,human-oriented social structure culture and enwei-oriented social structure culture on the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure.The results of the robustness test of changing the level of corporate environmental information disclosure and the cultural measurement of social structure show that the difference order pattern social structure culture and its family-oriented social structure culture,human-oriented social structure culture and enwei-oriented social structure culture have no significant influence on the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Third,social value culture and social structure culture have a comprehensive impact on enterprise environmental information disclosure.The social structure culture of differential order pattern significantly affects the relationship between power distance,uncertainty avoidance and corporate environmental information disclosure,but does not significantly affect the relationship between masculine temperament and corporate environmental information disclosure.The more significant the cultural characteristics of the social structure of the differential order pattern,the higher the degree of reduction of the power distance to the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure,and the lower the degree of increase of uncertainty avoidance to the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure.However,the significant influence of the social structure culture of the differential order pattern on the relationship between power distance,uncertainty avoidance and the level of corporate environmental information disclosure is only reflected in the provincial administrative regions where residents have lower level of university education and market-oriented process.Further analysis shows that the social structure culture of differential order pattern significantly improves the degree of reduction of power distance to the level of hard disclosure of environmental information,and significantly reduces the level of uncertainty avoidance on the level of hard disclosure of environmental information and the level of soft disclosure of environmental information.Family-oriented social structure culture significantly improves the increase of masculine temperament on the level of corporate environmental information disclosure.Human-oriented social structure culture and enwei-oriented social structure culture do not significantly affect the relationship between power distance,masculine temperament,uncertainty avoidance and corporate environmental information disclosure.The robustness test results based on manufacturing samples and deleted samples in 2018 remain unchanged.Fourth,the disclosure of social culture and corporate environmental information affects the value of corporate options.The level of corporate environmental information disclosure significantly increases the value of corporate growth options and liquidation options.Power distance significantly improves the degree of increase of corporate environmental information disclosure level to the value of corporate growth options,collectivism and masculinity significantly reduce the degree of increase of corporate environmental information disclosure level on corporate growth option value,uncertainty avoidance does not significantly affect the degree of increase of corporate environmental information disclosure level on corporate growth option value;The social structure culture of the differential order pattern significantly reduces the increase of the enterprise environmental information disclosure level to the enterprise growth option value;the social value culture and social structure culture do not significantly affect the increase degree of the enterprise environmental information disclosure level to the enterprise liquidation option value.Further analysis shows that the level of hard disclosure of environmental information and the level of soft disclosure of environmental information significantly increase the value of growth options and liquidation options.The power distance significantly improves the increase of the level of hard disclosure environmental information on the value of corporate growth options,while collectivism and masculinity significantly reduce the increase of the level of hard disclosure environmental information on the value of corporate growth options.Collectivism significantly reduces the increase of the level of enterprise soft disclosure environmental information to the value of corporate growth options.The social structure culture of differential order pattern significantly reduces the increase of the level of hard disclosure environmental information and soft disclosure environmental information on the value of enterprise growth options.Power distance,collectivism,masculinity and uncertainty avoidance and the social structure culture of differential order pattern do not significantly affect the increase of the level of hard disclosure environmental information and soft disclosure environmental information on the value of enterprise liquidation options.The robustness test results of changing the measurement method of corporate equity value show that the level of corporate environmental information disclosure has a significant increasing effect on the value of corporate growth options and liquidation options.The influence of social value culture and social structure culture on the relationship between corporate environmental information disclosure and corporate growth option value and liquidation option value remains unchanged.Compared with the existing research,this study expands the research perspective of the influencing factors of corporate environmental information disclosure and provides micro-evidence of corporate environmental information disclosure for the revolution of financial culture.The social culture is divided into social value culture and social structure culture,which expands the research perspective of the influence of social culture on corporate governance.The research on the influence of social value culture and social structure culture on enterprise environmental information disclosure provides micro-level empirical evidence for Max Weber's proposition on the relationship between religious ethics and economic development.It provides micro-level empirical evidence for Max Weber's argument that Chinese traditional society adapts to earthly rationalism and hinders China's social and economic development.The theoretical exposition and empirical analysis on the differential order pattern enrich the theoretical research on the differential order pattern,and the research on the impact of social culture and corporate environmental information disclosure on the value of corporate options expands the research perspective on the economic consequences of corporate environmental information disclosure.In a word,this study expands the research perspective of the influencing factors and economic consequences of corporate environmental information disclosure,and enriches the research literature of financial Cultural-revolution and corporate environmental information disclosure.This study not only has a certain academic significance,but also can provide policy-making reference for regulatory departments.First of all,the concept of the conceptual framework of financial accounting can be introduced into the policy-making process of enterprise environmental information disclosure to improve the regulatory policy of enterprise environmental information disclosure.Secondly,improve the capital market supervision policy of corporate environmental information disclosure,improve the positive effect of corporate environmental information disclosure on corporate governance and corporate option value,and promote management to actively disclose environmental information.Finally,create a good social and cultural atmosphere,form a social value culture and social structure culture that is conducive to the management to actively disclose corporate environmental information disclosure,and promote the development of corporate environmental information disclosure.