Media Attention;Environmental Information Disclosure Quality And Cost Of Debt

The high cost of debt will restrict the financing capacity of the whole enterprise,making it difficult to obtain sufficient external funds to carry out business activities,which is not conducive to the development of enterprises.At the same time,the high cost of debt will also distort the financing structure of enterprises and reduce the market efficiency of capital allocation.Accordingly,in the circumstances of the overall high level of debt in China,how to effectively reduce the cost of corporate debt financing has become the focal parts of academic research and attention.The existing literature shows that the level of information disclosure affects the cost of debt financing of enterprise by influencing the information asymmetry between the enterprise and the creditor,which has an impact on the degree of information risk and business venture of creditors.At present,the social attention to the environmental problems gradually increased,the enterprise environmental performance is not only closely related to the business management and future development of the enterprise,its environmental information has also gradually become an important basis for investor investment decisions,but the existing literature rarely involves this aspect of the research.Therefore,from the perspective of environmental information disclosure,it is of theoretical and practical significance to study the impact of environmental information disclosure quality on the cost of debt.In addition,the media attention as an external informal governance mechanism outside the law,has a significant impact on the cost of corporate debt.However,the existing literature rarely studies the factors that influence the cost of corporate debt financing from the perspective of external media.Obviously,this has become one of the focuses of this study.Media attention and environmental information disclosure can effectively alleviate the information asymmetry,standardize the behavior of enterprises in a certain extent,and reduce the information risks and business risk faced by investors,thereby reducing the cost of corporate debt financing.Based on this,this paper reasonably expected the impact of media attention on the quality of environmental information disclosure and the cost of debt,and further study the relationship between the three.Based on the listed companies of the heavy polluting industry in stock markets of Shanghai from 2012 to 2016 as the research object,using the method of normative research and empirical research,this paper designs the variables and empirical models according to the theoretical analysis,and studies the relationship between media attention,environmental information disclosure quality and the cost of debt through the descriptive statistics,correlation analysis,regression analysis and Robustness test of panel data.The results are as follows:(1)The quality of environmental information disclosure is generally not high in our country.(2)Media attention is negatively related to the cost of debt financing,that is,the higher the media attention,the lower the debt costs of listed companies.(3)Environmental information disclosure quality shows negative correlation with the cost of debt.The higher the quality of environmental information disclosure,the lower the cost of corporate debt.(4)The relationship between environmental information disclosure quality and the cost of debt is affected by the media attention negatively.In conclusion,this paper puts forward some suggestions from the three aspects of government supervision departments,enterprises themselves and investors on how to improve the environmental information disclosure system and environmental finance policy,deepen the reform and management of the media industry,establish a correct view of investment and rational use of media.Furthermore,the possible innovation of this paper lies in: Firstly,the existing literature is less concerned with the media attention to the impact of corporate debt costs.And this paper through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis of the relationship between the media attention on the cost of debt,enrich the research content related factors influencing the debt financing cost.Secondly,this paper is not confined to the traditional way of the relationship between media attention,the quality of environmental information disclosure and the cost of debt,but tries to study the relationship between the quality of environmental information disclosure and the cost of debt from the perspective of the media,and further analyzes the existing relationship and mechanism between the three.