The Influence Of Female Board Members On Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility

The diversified board can overcome cognitive limitations of members and encourage members of different background with differentiated perspectives and insights to promote board governance and corporate governance.Gender is the most basic feature as a corporate board member.The differences between sex and gender roles lead to differences of thinking styles and perspectives,which affect the internal coordination mechanism and decision-making process of the board.When the board is considered to have direct responsibility for corporate social responsibility and sustainable development,the influence of female board members on corporate environmental social responsibility has research significance.Based on the environmental legitimacy and environmental ethics of female board members,this paper analyzes the influence mechanism of female board members on the environmental social responsibility by consulting function and supervision function and provides a theoretical understanding of the governance role of female board members from the perspective of environmental governance.Further research explores the external factors that promote or weaken the environmental governance role of female board members and explores the institutional and cultural factors that influences the environmental governance of female board members from the aspects of environmental regulation pressure and gender culture.This dissertation consists of seven chapters:The first chapter mainly introduces the research background and research significance,summarizes the main content,and describes the technical route;The second chapter presents the research review of female board members and environmental social responsibility;The third chapter constructs the theoretical framework of female board members' influence on corporate environmental social responsibility,and analyzes the intrinsic motivation,influence mechanism and external influence factors;The fourth chapter mainly examines the influence of female board members on corporate environmental social responsibility from the perspective of empirical evidence;The fifth chapter considers the environmental regulation pressure and examines the enhancement effect of environmental regulation pressure on female board members to promote corporate environmental social responsibility;the sixth chapter mainly analyzes the influence of gender culture and examines the weakening effect of gender culture on female board members to promote corporate environmental social responsibility.In chapter seven the conclusions and contributions are elaborated,and the future research is discussed.In this dissertation,the main research results are as follows:(1)As board being an important internal governance mechanism,female board members can promote the corporate environmental social responsibility by their monitoring and advisory functions.The study found that female board members significantly improved corporate environmental social responsibility;the female board members highly educated or with academic research background can significantly improve the environmental social responsibility;Female independent directors,female committee directors,and female non-executive directors can significantly improve corporate environmental social responsibility.Therefore,as female board members diversifying the board composition,the corporate should pay attention to female board members,roles in corporate governance,especially in corporate environmental social responsibility,and improve the corporate board structure from the human and capital characteristics,and position characteristics of female board members,so as to improve corporate environmental social responsibility.(2)The pressure of environmental regulation can stimulate the environmental legitimacy and environmental ethics of female board members and strengthen the promotion effect of female board members on corporate environmental social responsibility.The study finds that environmental regulation pressure positively moderates the role of female board members in promoting environmental social responsibility;considering the heterogeneity of corporate risks,the study finds that in the sample of firms having a high degree of risk,the positive moderating effect of environmental regulation pressure on female board members' environmental social responsibility is significant.It shows that under the pressure of environmental regulation,female board members further promote the environmental social responsibility due to legality and ethical motives,and this effect is significant when the corporate risk is large,which reflects the need for risk avoidance of female board members.Therefore,to study the impact of external environmental regulation on the environmental governance of female board members is of great practical significance for building a multi-party environmental governance system and vigorously improving the quality of corporate environmental social responsibility.(3)Gender culture hinders the promotion effect of female board members on corporate environmental social responsibility.This paper adopts the gender ratio of birth in each province as the proxy of gender culture and finds that gender culture negatively moderates the effect of female board members on corporate environmental social responsibility.Considering the influence of board compensation gender differences,when the gender compensation gap is small,the negative moderating of gender culture is not significant.It shows that the environmental governance of female board members is affected by the gender culture in the external environment,and the impact is not significant in the sample with small gender pay gaps in board,indicating that the fairness of internal incentives makes up for the unfairness of social gender culture.Therefore,in corporate governance,we should promote the gender equality concept between men and women,change the traditional gender culture,eliminate gender bias,remove barriers for women's expression needs,and improve the initiative of women directors to improve environmental social responsibility.And when gender bias still exists in gender culture,minimizing the gender pay gap is the key to strengthen the environmental social responsibility of female board members.At this stage,the glass ceiling through which women are promoted to directors is difficult to break.Even if women are members of the board,most of them are symbolic "vase",which greatly weakens the role of female board members in corporate governance.Through the combination of theoretical analysis and empirical research,this paper confirms the important role of female board members in promoting corporate environmental social responsibility and explores the external environmental factors that influence the role from the perspective of environmental regulation pressure and gender culture.This study provides theoretical support for attaching importance to female board members in the role of promoting corporate environmental social responsibility,provides a new external context and perspective for studying the governance role of female board members,and extending the research on the corporate governance of female board members in the Chinese context.