Research On Environmental Information Disclosure Of Listed Companies Under External Pressure:Evidence From Heavily Polluting Industry Of Shanghai A-shares

The late1970s, the policy of reform and development has injected new impetus to China’s economic and social development. However, along with rapid economic growth, it is followed by a tightening of resource constraints, the grim situation of serious environmental pollution and ecological degradation. In recent years, this phenomenon has not been alleviated, but even gets worse. Until today, the environmental problem has become the bottleneck of China’s economic and social development, thus the Party and State betting more attention on environmental protection. The Eighteenth People’s Congress for the first time to include environmental protection in ecological civilization construction. Environmental protection is no longer mentioned separately, but with resource conservation, energy conservation, development of renewable energy, water, air and soil pollution governance and so on, which is referred to as the concept of "ecological civilization", and rose to unprecedented height as the eighth part of the entire report be stressed separately. The status of environmental protection in the Eighteenth People’s Congress report reflects the Party and State emphasis on environmental protection and the determination to improve China’s environment problem.Section I, Research purposesBased on the social context mentioned above, how to improve the disclosure of enterprise environmental information in China becomes a topic of great significance. Given the current studies of the motivation of enterprise environmental information disclosure mainly focused on the corporate governance and performance. This article embarks from the external factors of the enterprises, further study of the motives of the enterprise environmental information disclosure.The main purposes of this paper are as follows:First of all, by introducing substitution variables in the empirical method, this paper intends to study the effects of different forms of external pressure on corporate environmental information disclosure. Secondly, based on the research on the impact of external pressure on corporate environmental information disclosure, this paper examines whether there is different in the influence of external pressure of environmental information disclosure with enterprises of different nature.Section II, Research contentThe research idea of this paper is as follows. Firstly, beginning from the supply motive of environmental information disclosure of companies, we put forward that the external pressure of enterprise mainly embodied in three aspects. Secondly, we specifically discussed how this pressure impact on the enterprise environment information disclosure, and then we put forward Hie corresponding hypothesis, establishing empirical model and finally tested whether our hypothesis was established. Thirdly, we classified the research sample by enterprise nature and further tested whether there is different in the influence of external pressure of environmental information disclosure with enterprises of different nature. Finally, draw conclusions of this study, reflect on the deficiencies of this article and look forward to further research directions.The paper is structured as follows:Chapter Ⅰ, Introduction. Explain the research’s background, purpose, and research ideas.Chapter Ⅱ, the literature review. Summarizing the existing research on environmental information disclosure, we found that most research focused on two aspects--the content and the motive of the environmental information disclosure. Especially in the study of the environmental information disclosure motive, most researches have considered the influence of company characteristics and corporate governance. But those researches are still not far enough, a few scholars focus on the external pressure of the environmental information disclosure, many of which are normative research, thus it is necessary to further probe the motives of the environmental Information disclosure.Chapter III, theoretical analysis. This chapter begins with the supply motives of the environmental information disclosure and then proposes there were two mainly types of information supply motivation:external pressures theory, voluntary disclosure theory. Next, this chapter elaborates the external pressure which the enterprise may face. Finally, this chapter explains the impact of external pressure on corporate environmental disclosure by theory of legitimacy and public pressure theory.Chapter IV, analysis of current situation. This chapter begins with an overview of the institutional background of the environmental information disclosure of China’s listed companies, Secondly, the chapter summarized the way of environmental information disclosure, pointed out that due to the lack of uniform guidelines, the current situation of the environmental information disclosure of China is not optimistic. Thirdly, under the guidance of the "Disclosure of Environmental Information", this chapter proposed a framework of environmental information disclosure, and on this basis, this chapter designed the environmental disclosure index to evaluate the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in China. Finally, this chapter identified the research sample:the heavily polluting industry of companies listed in SSE A market, and on this basis, this article analyzed the current situation of environmental information disclosure.Chapter V, Empirical Research. The current empirical analysis of influencing factors of environmental information mainly starts from the internal factor such as shareholder structure, company size, capital structure and the industry characteristics of enterprise. This article researched the motives of environmental information disclosure from the perspective of external pressure, through the empirical analysis and then draws the conclusion.Chapter VI, Conclusion and Suggestion. Combined with earlier theoretical analysis and empirical results, summarized the conclusions of this study. Analyze the limitations of this study, present the research prospects.The conclusions of this study are:First, the environmental information disclosure quality of the heavily polluting industry of companies listed in SSE A market was lower, but thankfully, it has shown a slow upward trend in recent years. Secondly, the external pressure such as government pressure, market pressures and social pressures, which helped promoting corporate disclosure level of environmental information. Thirdly, there is different in the influence of external pressure of environmental information disclosure with enterprises of different nature.Section Ⅲ, Expected contributionsThe contribution of this paper are:First of all, explored the motivation of the environmental information disclosure from the perspective of the external pressure, which further enriched the empirical study of the environmental information disclosure. Secondly, based on the classification of samples, explored whether there is different in the influence of external pressure of environmental information disclosure with enterprises of different nature, and then make policy recommendations.Weaknesses of this article are:The process of calculation the environmental disclosure index with a certain amount of subjectivity; this article only considered two ways of disclosure:annual report and independent environmental reports (including the report of sustainable development and social responsibility report), which ignored other channels; measured the social pressures undertaken by the enterprises from the degree of media attention neglected the social pressures such as the community and environmental NGO pressure.