Impact Of Environmental Information Enclosure On Corporate Performance

As the economy grows rapidly, the environmental problems that face mankindbecome increasingly prominent. The three wastes (waste gas, waste water, industrialresidue) produced by industrial enterprises and arbitrary use of natural resources bymankind have resulted in serious problems including global warming, greenhouseeffect and haze. As the public, the government and other corporate stakeholders payincreasing attention to environmental protection, they demand enterprises to discloseenvironmental information. Environmental information disclosure can rely on theeffects of the public and other corporate stakeholders’ decisions to affect the corporatevalue and performance. From the view of environmental information disclosure, thearticle discusses whether such disclosure has an effect on the corporate performance.By reference to research methods adopted by scholars at home and abroad toanalyze the effects of environmental information disclosure on corporate performance,the article elaborates on three rationales for environmental information disclosure,namely stakeholder theory, signaling theory and reputation theory. On the basis ofsuch three rationales, the article puts forward its hypothesis, builds a multipleregression model of environmental information disclosure and corporate performance,and analyzes the effects of prior period environmental information disclosure oncurrent period corporate performance. The research target is manufacture chemicalraw materials and products in A-share listed companies between2009-2012. Gradingenvironmental financial information and non-financial information which arecontained in annual reports and social responsibility reports are used to formenvironmental information disclosure index using content analysis. Then influence ofenvironmental information disclosure on return on total assets,return on equity and netprofit margin on sales are analyzed using descriptive statistics analysis, correlationanalysis and regression analysis of variables and models. The results show: althoughthe level of environmental information disclosure in sample enterprises grows higheryear by year, the overall level remains low; environmental financial informationdisclosure of sample enterprises has significant and positive effects on their corporateperformance; the effects of environmental non-financial information disclosure ofsample enterprises on their corporate performance are not significant; prior periodenvironmental information disclosure has positive effects on return on totalassets,return on corporate performance. In the end, based on conclusions in the article, suggestions as to how to improve the level of corporate environmental informationdisclosure are made from five aspects: enhancing environmental accountingtheoretical research, establishing and improving environmental information disclosuresystem, strengthening supervision from governments at all levels, improvingcorporate environmental management as well as quality of accounting personnel.