The Research Of The Relationship Between Tone At The Top And Environmental Performance Based On Media Attention

Tone at the top decide the environmental values of the whole company,thus decide whether company will conduct environmental protection practices and improve environmental performance.Based on accountability theory,corporate social report should reflect the real situation of environmental responsibility fulfillment;While according to legitimacy theory,top management may exaggerate tone at the top in corporate social report to actively manage reputation,but without further actions regarding what they promised in the report.Do words speak louder than actions about corporate commitment to corporate environmental responsibility? In recent years,environmental accidents happened frequently in listed companies like Zijin Mining and Harbin Pharmaceutical Group,as listed companies are facing growing public pressure,will media be helpful in promoting environmental values management?On the background of environmental laws and regulations and the basis of relative theory,this study collected corporate social reports from 219 listed companies from 2011 to 2016 and investigate the relationship between tone at the top,media attention and environmental performance.First,using mining method,this study catches key words in CEOs' statements of corporate social report and calculates word frequency as tone at the top about environmental liability.Dividing the tone into two kinds: the reactive tone and the proactive tone from the environmental legal perspective,this paper explores the relationship between different kinds of tone and environmental performance.Further,the study investigates whether environmental media serve to moderate the negative relationship between tone at the top and environmental performance.The results show that the proactive tone is used as a ladder of management to gain legality,which tallies with prior result.However,the reactive tone which represent environmental legal compliance,do bring the improvement of environmental performance,indicating that corporations hold the bottom line of corporate environmental responsibility.Media,as an information intermediary for different stakeholders,may promote the implementation of the tone by influencing executives' reputation,thus improve environmental performance.