A Study On The Relationship Between Environmental Information Disclosure And Environmental Performance In Heavy Pollution Industry

With the continuous improvement of the level of national economic,the production and management activities of the enterprise bring various impact to the natural environment,such as soil erosion,soil desertification,soil pollution,ozone hole,global warming,acid rain,ground collapse and so on.Therefore,the relevant departments of the government,consumers and the public are increasingly concerned about the environmental problems caused by the business operations of the enterprise,requiring the listed companies of the heavily pollution industries improving the quality of environmental information disclosure and environmental performance.Studying the correlation between environmental performance and environmental information disclosure has important theoretical and practical significance.Learning from the research of the domestic and foreign scholars about environmental information disclosure and environmental performance,this thesis defines the concept of environmental performance and environmental information disclosure.Based on the theory of signal transmission,the theory of information asymmetry and the theory of voluntary information disclosure,this thesis studies the relationship between environmental information disclosure and environmental performance.This thesis explains the necessity of environmental information disclosure based on the theory of stakeholder and the theory of sustainable development.Based on the analysis of the relevant theory and the literature research,this thesis puts forward the hypotheses.The environmental performance has a positive effect on the level of environmental information disclosure.The level of environmental information disclosure also has a positive effect on the environmental performance.The nature of enterprises has no effect on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and environmental performance.This thesis constructs six multiple regression models between environmental information disclosure and environmental performance,analyzing the correlation between environmental information disclosure and environmental performance,verifying the three assumptions presented in the thesis.This thesis chooses the listed companies of the heavily pollution industries as the samples,manually collecting the environmental information in the 2008-2015 social responsibility report and the annual report.Using the method of the content analysis,scoring according to the detailed degree of the environmental information described,this thesis measures the level of environmental information disclosure and environmental performance of the listed companies.Then,this thesis conducts the descriptive statistics of each variable,analyzing the correlation between the variables,carrying out the multiple regression to study the relationship between the level of environmental information disclosure and environmental performance,and testing the robustness of the model.Finally this thesis draws the following conclusions:(1)The level of environmental information disclosure of the listed companies in the heavily pollution industries is increasing year by year,but the level of the environmental information disclosure is still low in general.There is a big difference in the level of environmental disclosure between industries and the level of environmental information disclosure needs to be further improved.(2)The environmental performance has a positive effect on the level of environmental information disclosure,and there is no U-type correlation between the level of the environmental information disclosure and environmental performance.(3)The level of the environmental information disclosure has a positive effect on the environmental performance,and the impact of the environmental information disclosure on the environmental performance is not lagging behind.(4)There is no significant difference in the impact of the nature of the enterprise on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and environmental performance.Finally,based on the previous literature research and the conclusions of the thesis,the thesis puts forward some suggestions to improve the level of the environmental information disclosure and environmental performance of the listed companies in China.