Research On The Effectiveness Of Environmental Management System Certification From The Perspective Of Corporate Finance And Institutional Environment

Since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,with the promulgation and implementation of the "strictest in the history" new environmental protection law and the implementation of a series of supporting measures,China’s ecological environment protection has achieved significant results.In recent years,China’s environmental governance model has gradually changed from a single government-led environmental governance model to a comprehensive environmental governance model involving multiple parties from the government,market,society,and corporates.Among the voluntary environmental management measures taken by corporates,ISO14001 environmental management system certification is currently the most widely used environmental management tool.Since the formal introduction of this standard in China,more and more Chinese corporates have applied for environmental management system certification,and the number of corporates that have passed the certification has now ranked first in the world.The issue of effectiveness about whether the environmental management system certification can improve corporate environmental performance is increasingly concerned by the academic community,but most of the related research has been conducted on a sample of corporates from developed countries abroad,and no consistent conclusion has yet been reached.Some scholars believe that environmental management system certification can improve corporate environmental performance,while other scholars have reached different conclusions.One of the important reasons for the above-mentioned research conclusions to be so divergent is that the relevant research lacks the use of relevant theories to deeply analyze the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance and a discussion on the moderating mechanisms and mediating paths for achieving the effectiveness of the environmental management system certification.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study the effectiveness of the environmental management system certification and its mechanism.Based on the research results at home and abroad,this article comprehensively uses the theory of organization management,legitimacy theory,redundant resource theory and institutional theory,and adopts research methods combining normative analysis and empirical analysis to study.This article selects the heavily polluting industry listed companies in the A-shares of Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2010 and 2017 in China as the research samples,from the perspective of corporate finance and institutional environment,and studies the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance and its moderating mechanism and mediating path.Its content mainly includes the following three parts: First,the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance;Second,the moderating role of corporate financial competences and institutional pressures in the effect of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance;Third,the mediating role of corporate environmental investment and legitimacy in the effect of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance.Through research,this article draws the following conclusions and viewpoints with certain reference value:(1)By examining the impact of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance,it was found that environmental management system certification can significantly improve corporate environmental performance.After further distinguishing the nature of property rights,it was found that environmental management system certification can significantly improve corporate environmental performance for both state-owned corporates and non-state-owned corporates,and this positive impact is more pronounced in state-owned corporates.After further distinguishing before and after the promulgation and implementation of the new environmental protection law,it was found that environmental management system certification can significantly improve corporate environmental performance before and after the promulgation and implementation of the new environmental protection law,and with the promulgation and implementation of the new environmental protection law,the positive relationship between environmental management system certification and corporate environmental performance becomes more significant.(2)By examining the moderating role of corporate financial competences and institutional pressures in the effect of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance,it was found that profitability competence,solvency competence and operating competence played a positive moderating role and development competences played a negative moderating role;government regulation,industry competition and industry associations all played a positive moderating role.After further distinguishing the nature of property rights,it was found that the positive moderating effect of profitability competence and solvency competence of corporates was significant in non-state-owned corporates,but not significant in state-owned corporates,while the positive moderating effect of operating competence and the negative moderating effect of development competence is significant in both state-owned and non-state-owned corporates;the positive moderating effect of government regulation and industry associations is significant in state-owned corporates and non-state-owned corporates,while the positive moderating effect of industry competition is significant in non-state-owned corporates and is not significant in state-owned corporates.After further distinguishing before and after the promulgation and implementation of the new environmental protection law,it was found that the moderating effect of profitability competence,solvency competence,operating competence and development competence of corporates were significant before the promulgation and implementation of the new environmental protection law,but not significant after the promulgation and implementation;the positive moderating effect of industry competition and industry associations were significant before and after the new environmental protection law was promulgated and implemented;the positive moderating effect of government regulation was significant before the new environmental protection law was promulgated and implemented,and it became less significant after the promulgation and implementation.(3)By examining the mediating role of corporate environmental investment and legitimacy in the effect of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance,it was found that corporate environmental investment,political legitimacy and commercial legitimacy all played a mediating role.After further distinguishing the nature of property rights,it was found that the mediating role of corporate environmental investment and commercial legitimacy is significant in both state-owned corporates and non-state-owned corporates,and the mediating role of political legitimacy is significant in state-owned corporates,but not significantint in non-state-owned corporates.After further distinguishing before and after the implementation of the new environmental protection law,it was found that the mediating role of corporate environmental protection investment,political legitimacy,and commercial legitimacy were significant before and after the implementation of the new environmental protection law.(4)Based on the above research conclusions,it is proposed to incorporate environmental management system certification into the corporate’s development strategy,to increase the financial and technical support,and to strengthen the government’s environmental supervision functions and other countermeasures.This article will strive to be innovative in the following points:(1)Introducing Management Process Theory and Legitimacy theory to study the relationship between environmental management system certification and corporate environmental performance,which enriches the theoretical basis of the research field on environmental management system certification’s effectiveness and supplements the empirical evidence from developing countries.At present,most of the relevant research is carried out by foreign developed countries for domestic corporates,and most of them are direct tests on the effectiveness of environmental management system certification,and the theoretical basis is weak.This article comprehensively uses Management Process Theory and Legitimacy Theory to conduct a more in-depth and systematic theoretical research and empirical research on the effectiveness of environmental management system certification,which will help to enrich the theoretical basis of the research field on environmental management system certification’s effectiveness,and supplement empirical evidence from developing countries.(2)Exploring the moderating mechanism of corporate financial competences and institutional pressures in the effectiveness of environmental management system certification,and expanding the research on boundary conditions of environmental management system certification from the perspectives of economic and institutional conditions.Previous studies on the effectiveness of environmental management system certification have neglected the investigation of its boundary conditions.This article uses Slack Resource Theory and Institutional Theory to build a comprehensive system of corporate financial competences and institutional pressures.From the perspective of economic and institutional conditions,it systematically examines the moderating mechanism of corporate financial competences and institutional pressures in the effectiveness of environmental management system certification,and expands the research on the boundary conditions of environmental management system certification’s effectiveness.(3)Exploring the mediating effect of corporate environmental protection investment and legitimacy in the effectiveness of environmental management system certification.From the perspective of corporate financial and institutional environment,the internal mechanism of the effectiveness of environmental management system certification is revealed.In the past,relevant researches lacked an investigation on the mediating mechanism of the effect of environmental management system certification on corporate environmental performance.Based on Slack Resource Theory and Legitimacy Theory,this paper deeply investigates the mediating effect of corporate environmental protection investment and legitimacy in environmental management system certification affecting corporate environmental performance,opens the “black box” in the process of environmental management system certification effectiveness,and reveals the internal mechanism of the effectiveness of environmental management system certification from the perspective of corporate financial and institutional environment.