Media Attention, Internal Control And Environmental Information Disclosure

Since the 21 st century,China's economic level has a great progress,but economic development has also led to a series of environmental problems,so the government and the public have more and more attention to environmental problems.The environmental report is a direct channel for the public to know whether the enterprise to fulfill the social responsibility.The disclosure of environmental information is conducive to the supervision of the government and the public about environmental behavior of enterprises,so as to maintain the social environment.Since the environmental information disclosure guidelines promulgated,more and more heavily polluting enterprises began to disclose environmental information so that the public have a better understanding of the enterprise.And in the information age,the media as an effective external supervision mechanism plays an extremely important role and media is not only an important channel for the public understanding of the enterprise,but also plays the role of a bridge information communication between government regulators and listed companies.As enterprise internal control system and self-discipline system,its connotation determines its different spillover effect.Whether overflow to the level of corporate environmental information disclosure is a valuable research topic.In this article,media attention as an important factor to affect the level of corporate environmental information disclosure,and take further investigate about the mediating effect on the relationship between the effectiveness of internal control in order to deepen the understanding of the theory and application of policy formation so as to provide a reference policy recommendations for the development of Chinese heavily polluting enterprises and improve the level of environmental information disclosure.This study selected the heavy pollution companies which listed in Shanghai A-share from 2012 to 2015 as samples such as the food industry,iron and steel industry,coal industry,petrochemical industry,paper making clothing industry,energy industry and so on and using theoretical analysis and empirical research methods,reviewing the literature on media attention,environmental information disclosure first and then introducing information asymmetry theory,media agenda,public pressure theory,principal-agent theory and the theory of social responsibility,building the framework of media attention,internal control effectiveness and environmental information disclosure,constructing empirical models about them.Putting the media attention and the internal control together,studying the effects of the media attention to the environmental information disclosure,and the intermediary effect of the internal control on the media focus impact on environmental information disclosure,and put forward a series of hypothesis on the basis of theoretical analysis and the research models.Through the analysis of the main variables of sample test and regression of the robustness and the mediating effect in this paper,the empirical results show that:(1)the higher the degree of media attention,the higher the level of environmental information disclosure.The media attention is a supervision of disclosure of corporate information,the more attention by the media companies,will be more motivated to improve their level of environmental information disclosure for their own reputation and development.(2)The media attention is significantly related to the effectiveness of internal control.Enterprise's exposure will attract the attention of the executives,prompting more standardize for its own internal control so that the internal control become more effective.(3)The internal control plays a significant mediating effect in the effectiveness of media focus enhancing the enterprise environmental information disclosure level and it belongs to the partial mediation effect.That is to say,as an external governance mechanism,media attention can not directly play the effectiveness of corporate governance,it needs to act on the company's internal governance mechanism to influence the effectiveness of internal control,and then regulate the environment,improve the level of environmental information disclosure.According to the conclusions,the following Suggestions put forward: media and the public should give full play to their role as the external supervision;Enterprise should improve the governance mechanism related to the environment and the internal control mechanism;Government departments should improve the internal control of related laws and regulations,strengthen supervision and punishment,to further improve the laws and regulations of environmental information disclosure,listed companies environmental behavior.