The Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Executive Characteristics And Environmental Performance

As societal expectations regarding firms’ environmental responsibilities increase, en vironmental performance is becoming an area where strategic opportunities can be iden tified. Firms with strong environmental performance can reduce operating costs, improv e access to resources, and reduce employee turnover. Furthermore, firms with good en vironmental performance can take advantage of market opportunities created by creased demand for environmentally friendly goods and services. Therefore, we analyzed the relationship between the executive characteristics and environmental performance. And put forward several corporate governance proposals to improve the level of environme ntal performance.This article firstly summarized the literature that related to executive characteristic s and environmental performance. Based on the principal agent theory, resource depen dence theory and upper echelons theory, summarized the environmental performance ev aluation standards, then we obtained the environmental performance evaluation system, we proposed several hypothesis. The environmental performance is as explained varia ble, the executive characteristics as explanatory variables, we consider A-share listed c ompanies of heavy pollution industry in Chinese shanghai exchange between 2008 and 2013 as the samples, use the statistical software of STATA12.0 and SPSS 17.0, to res earch the influence of executive characteristics on environmental performance, this stud y find that:(1) executives’average educational level, the proportion of male and the size have significantly positive effects on corporate environmental performance;(2) the political background, duality and corporate environmental performance are negative rele vant;(3)the environmental performance is positively affected by the average age, but no t significantly, the environmental performance is negatively affected by average tenure, but not significantly;(4)the direct control properties and environmental performance ar e significantly positive related, also can affect the function of executive characteristics significantly. Finally, according to the empirical results, we put forward a number of corporate governance proposals to improve the environmental performance. The researc h conclusions of this paper have broadened the research perspective of corporate gover ance, and can improve the evaluation system of environmental performance.