The Research On Environmental Information Disclosure Condition And Influence Factors

This thesis considers companies from the petrochemical and plasticindustries in Shanghai’s stock market as an example to further explorethese companies’ environmental information disclosure condition and itsinfluencing factors. In this thesis， a complete environmental informationdisclosure indexing system is established， and the analysis is thenconducted， based on each companies’ annual reports， socialresponsibility reports， annual environmental reports and last but not leasttheir official websites. The thesis mainly focuses on the impact of equitycharacteristics on selective disclosure of environmental information， afterwhich several practical procedures to effectively improve theenvironmental disclosure of these companies are proposed.It was found during conducting this research that the mostconcentrated and comprehensive way to disclose environmentalinformation is through the companies’ annual reports followed by theirsocial responsibility reports. However in terms of the quantity and qualityof disclosed information then annual environmental reports’ informationappears to be the best， closely followed by the social responsibilityreports whereas the annual report comes last closely followed by thecompanies’ website which reveals hardly anything.Based on above， the thesis takes companies’ annual reports， socialresponsibility reports as well as annual environmental reports as baselinesfrom which to explore the impact of equity characteristics on quantity，quality and overall level of environmental information disclosed. Iconcluded that the nature of ownership be it， state-owned， institutioninvestor-owned or manager-owned significantly affects corporate environmental disclosure level， whereas the equity concentration does not.This shows that the government regulation and supervision of institutionalinvestors all-round promotes the company environmental protection work.On the other hand，Managerial ownership simply increases disclosuremotivation when environmental work is concerned.