Research On Opportunistic Behavior In The Practice Of Corporate Environmental Responsibility

In recent years,as China’s economy and society have gradually turned to a new stage of high-quality development,the state has attached great importance to the construction of ecological civilization,promoted the environmental governance to an unprecedented new height,and made a series of top-level designs,institutional arrangements and decision-making arrangements,which promoted the historic changes in China’s ecological environmental protection situation.At the 75 th United Nations General Assembly in 2020,China officially put forward to the world that "carbon dioxide emissions will reach the peak before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060".Subsequently,the central government further incorporated "carbon peak and carbon neutrality" into the overall layout of ecological civilization construction.The above measures reflect China’s responsibility as a world power to actively respond to the challenges of global climate change and promote the construction of Community of Shared Future for Mankind.At the same time,it also shows China’s firm determination to adhere to the sustainable development route and achieve comprehensive green transformation of economy and society.Enterprises are the core participants in economic activities and the main emitters of pollutants.Promoting enterprises to actively fulfill their environmental and social responsibilities is an inevitable requirement for the construction of ecological civilization and an important starting point for realizing the transformation of production mode.However,in reality,China’s enterprises’ fulfillment of environmental responsibility is not optimistic,and there are opportunism phenomena in environmental protection such as "just shouting but not doing","superficial pollution control" and "perfunctory rectification".This kind of behavior reflects the characteristics of "more words than deeds" of enterprises in environmental protection practice.As a practical mode of environmental responsibility that responds in form but confronts in essence,"more words than deeds" reflects the opportunism tendency of enterprises in fulfilling their environmental responsibilities,which threatens the process of environmental governance in China and hinders China’s sustainable development strategy.However,at present,there are few literatures to conduct in-depth research on this phenomenon.Without a deep understanding of this opportunistic phenomenon,it is difficult to crack it effectively.Therefore,it is an urgent task to be solved before the government and the theoretical circle to find the intrinsic behavior motivation and effective governance strategy of corporate environmental responsibility.In view of this,based on the reality of China’s economic and social transition,this topic focuses on the phenomenon of "more words than deeds" in the performance of corporate environmental responsibility,that is,too much strategic planning in environmental reports and too little action investment in environmental practices.From the theoretical and empirical point of view,this paper makes an in-depth study on the phenomenon of "more words than deeds" in the performance of corporate environmental responsibility.Specifically,this topic focuses on the influencing factors of corporate environmental responsibility-economic consequencesgovernance mechanism,and focuses on the following four aspects: First,the implementation of environmental responsibility has gradually become the consensus and trend among enterprises,but there are obvious differences in the performance of environmental responsibility among enterprises,which leads to a question worth pondering.What factors are influencing the performance of corporate environmental behavior? For this paper,what factors are likely to cause enterprises to show "more words than deeds" environmental responsibility?The third chapter mainly discusses the influencing factors of "more words than deeds ".Second,in recent years,the state has attached great importance to the construction of ecological civilization,and the weight of local environmental governance performance in the performance evaluation of cadres has been continuously improved.Under this background,fulfilling environmental responsibility is likely to become an important way for enterprises to strengthen the relationship between government and enterprises and obtain government resources.For this reason,the fourth chapter focuses on the influence of the environmental responsibility performance of enterprises "more words than deeds" on government subsidies.Thirdly,at present,China is actively implementing the green credit policy,which strengthens the environmental constraints of corporate financing behavior.The performance of corporate environmental responsibility is likely to affect the allocation of credit resources of banks.For this reason,the fifth chapter focuses on the impact of corporate environmental responsibility performance of " more words than deeds " on bank credit decision-making.Fourthly,deepening the reform of regulatory system is the trend of securities market reform in recent years.Based on the emerging and important phenomenon that listed companies receive inquiries from exchanges,the sixth chapter studies whether environmental inquiries can effectively restrain the "more words than deeds" of corporate environmental responsibility,and further investigates the governance effect of joint supervision between the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Securities Regulatory Commission on " more words than deeds ",thus providing new ideas and discussions for the governance mechanism of "more words than deeds".The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)"more words than deeds" belongs to the low-cost reputation building mechanism of enterprises,which reflects the opportunism tendency in the process of corporate environmental responsibility.This kind of behavior is more likely to appear in enterprises with higher financing pressure,executives like self-packaging and worse information transparency.(2)The performance of environmental responsibility of enterprises "more words than deeds " has a significant positive impact on government subsidies.Under the background of strengthening the environmental performance appraisal of local governments,enterprises have the motivation to use the performance of environmental responsibility of "more words than deeds " for impression management,so as to enhance local governments’ evaluation of themselves and obtain more resources;The subsidy resource acquisition effect of "more words than deeds " only exists in the short term,and in the long term,the government can effectively identify this opportunistic behavior of enterprises;The implementation of the central environmental protection inspector has significantly inhibited the positive relationship between "more words than deeds" and government subsidies;Further analysis shows that the positive impact of "more words than deeds" on government subsidies is more prominent in enterprises with no political connection and heavy pollution industries.And compared with environmental protection subsidies,the positive impact of "more words than deeds" on non-environmental protection subsidies is more obvious.(3)The performance of environmental responsibility of " more words than deeds " is helpful for enterprises to obtain more bank loans.Under the background of implementing the green credit policy,enterprises will package themselves by building low-cost green reputation to meet the credit standards of banks;Compared with long-term bank loans,the positive impact of " more words than deeds " on short-term bank loans is more obvious;The promulgation of "Guiding Opinions on Building a Green Financial System" significantly inhibited the positive relationship between " more words than deeds " and bank loans;Further analysis shows that when the bank financing channels of enterprises are constrained by the green credit policy,enterprises will turn to commercial credit channels to seek financing;Compared with the enterprises that show "less words and more deeds" and "less words and less deeds" in environmental responsibility,the environmental responsibility performance of enterprises "more words than deeds" has a significant positive impact on bank loans;The positive impact of " more words than deeds " on bank loans is more obvious in enterprises with no political connection,lower value and worse market environment.(4)The environmental inquiry letter has significantly promoted the "wordiness" of corporate environmental responsibility performance,but it has no significant impact on the "behavior" of enterprises.On the whole,it has a significant positive impact on the "more words than deeds".The results show that the supervision method of inquiry letter has limited effectiveness in the performance of environmental responsibility of enterprises,and it does not show significant governance effect.The joint supervision of the environmental protection department and the securities regulatory department has significantly inhibit the performance of environmental responsibility with "more words than deeds".It shows that the joining of environmental protection departments can significantly promote enterprises to effectively improve their own environmental behavior.Further analysis shows that the joint supervision of departments can play a stronger role in the supervision of enterprises that are paid more attention by the media,where the pollution is more serious and the pressure of environmental regulation is greater,and significantly restrain the environmental responsibility performance of enterprises that "more words than deeds".The possible innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in four aspects:(1)The orientation of the research topic."more words than deeds" in the environmental protection practice of enterprises is a common phenomenon in reality,which reflects the opportunism tendency of enterprises in fulfilling their environmental responsibilities,and is one of the manifestations of pseudo-social responsibilities.At present,this problem has not been paid enough attention by the theoretical circle.This research is a new exploration and supplement to this field.(2)Reflected in the construction of research indicators."more words than deeds" is the core research index of this paper.This paper identifies and depicts this characteristic by "too much strategic planning" in corporate environmental report and too little action investment "in environmental practice.The idea and method of constructing this index have certain reference value for the follow-up related research.(3)It is reflected in the selection of research scenarios.Based on the background of strengthening the assessment of local government environmental governance and promoting the development of green finance in China,this paper finds that enterprises have the motivation to adopt " more words than deeds " environmental responsibility to meet regulatory requirements by building green reputation at low cost,and then seek more resources.This paper provides a new perspective for analyzing the interaction between macroeconomic and financial policies and micro-enterprise behaviors,and also enriches the research literature in the fields of government-enterprise relationship and bank credit decision.(4)This paper enriches the research perspective of China’s environmental protection policy.For the first time,this paper extends the inquiry letter system of stock exchange to the level of enterprise environment,investigates the influence of the front-line supervision of stock exchange on the environmental information disclosure behavior of enterprises,and empirically proves that the joint supervision of environmental protection departments and securities regulatory departments can promote the performance of enterprise environmental responsibility,which provides new enlightenment and support for the three-dimensional construction of China’s environmental supervision system.