Research On The Impact Of Corporate Environmental Governance On Environmental Information Disclosure

With the rapid development of China’s economy, the problem of the environmental pollution and damage is getting more and more attention from all sectors of society. An enterprise is not only an important producer of material wealth, but also a major producer of environmental pollution, and it has a great responsibility for environmental protection. How to improve the level of corporate environmental information disclosure has become the focus of the field of environmental accounting theory research and the field of environmental accounting management practice. At the level of government regulators, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China published the "Guidelines for Listed Companies Environmental Information Disclosure" (Draft) in 2010 which was designed to promote listed companies to actively fulfill its environmental protection responsibilities. At the level of enterprise, for the management of environmental affairs, more and more listed companies include the responsibility of environmental protection into the scope of corporate governance, taking the so-called corporate environmental governance mechanism to deal with the challenges of environmental problems. After the initial establishment of China’s environmental information disclosure system in 2010, has the level of environmental information disclosure for listed companies in China been promoted? Dose the corporate environmental governance mechanism of listed companies have an impact on the corporate environmental information disclosure? In addition, what effect the nature of equity of state-owned shares and non-state owned shares of listed companies has on the corporate environmental governance? These issues need to be studied urgently.This paper selects 294 listed companies from the Shanghai Stock Exchange A-share in heavily polluting industries during 2006-2014 as the research sample, and makes descriptive statistics analysis, non-parametric test, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis of the sample data, making empirical test of the effects of China’s environmental information disclosure system on environmental information disclosure of listed companies, corporate environmental governance mechanism on environmental information disclosure and listed companies’ equity nature on the role of corporate environmental governance mechanism.The research results show that, after the initial establishment of China’s environmental information disclosure system in 2010, the level of environmental information disclosure in China’s listed companies has been significantly improved. Corporate environmental governance mechanism and the level of environmental information disclosure have positive relationship. Specifically, the setting up of environmental (CSR) committee on listed companies’ board can have positive effect on the level of environmental information disclosure; More of the board of directors who have the consciousness of environmental protection the board has, higher of the level of corporate environmental information disclosure is. The nature of equity can affect the role of corporate environmental governance mechanism. Specifically, the equity nature of state-owned shares of listed companies is helpful for the role of directors who have environmental protection consciousness; however, the equity nature of state-owned shares of listed companies will not have much impact on the role of environmental (CSR) committee.