Research On The Relationship Among Corporate Culture, Environmental Information Disclosure And Financial Performance

Since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented, China’s economy has developed rapidly. However, environmental problems like environmental pollution, resource waste and ecological destruction have been increasingly serious, becoming important issues that cannot be ignored by China. Enterprises, as both the principal part driving economic growth and the main causers of environmental problems, ought to be responsible for environmental protection and control. Meanwhile, in the context where the state pays close attention to environmental protection and carries out strategies of sustainable development,enterprise environmental problems may bring about huge potential business risks and social risks. Stakeholders who concern about the enterprise’s fulfillment of environmental responsibility require the enterprise to fully and timely disclose environmental information.Nevertheless, despite the same formal institutional environment, Chinese enterprises have uneven level of environmental information disclosure. In view of this, this paper is aimed at conducting an empirical study on the relationship among corporate culture, environmental information disclosure and financial performance from the perspective of informal institution based on heavily polluting A-share listed companies.109 Chinese heavily polluting A-share enterprises in the stock markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen during 2012-2014 are taken as the research samples for empirical test. Different from previous studies applying questionnaire survey, this paper uses qualitative research to measure corporate culture. To be specific, starting from sample companies’ original data of corporate culture, it uses Nvivo10.0 for category extraction and constructs a heavily polluting industries’ corporate culture structure model covering six first-class categories like personnel concept, technology concept, management concept, environmental concept,spiritual concept and development concept. On this basis, a heavily polluting industries’ corporate culture measurement system is designed for quantitative measurement of corporate culture. With regard to the measurement of environmental information disclosure, this paper designs a heavily polluting industries’ environmental information disclosure evaluation system based on relevant regulations and existing academic studies, and does assignments for sample companies’ corporate environmental information by means of content analysis. In terms of financial performance measurement, this paper chooses return on net asset, revenue growth rate, price earnings ratio and Tobin’Q value to measure the financial performance from the perspectives of accounting and market. Regarding relationship test, this paperconstructs a relational model, namely, “corporate culture – environmental information disclosure – financial performance”. By integrating corporate culture, environmental information disclosure and financial performance into the model, the paper uses Amos21.0and structural equation for empirical analysis. According to the research, it is found that heavily polluting industries’ corporate culture and environmental information disclosure are significantly positively correlated, environmental information disclosure and financial performance are significantly positively correlated, and environmental information disclosure mediates the influence of corporate culture on financial performance. At last,this paper gives suggestions on how to improve environmental information disclosure quality from aspects of strengthening legislation, perfect the enterprise culture construction and strengthen the awareness of environmental information disclosure.