Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure,Media Attention And Debt Financing Cost

Reducing the cost of real economic enterprises is an important task of our country since the fifth Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee,which is of great significance for enhancing the sustainable development capacity of enterprises.Among them,the effective reduction of financing cost is one of the important aspects of the task.In recent years,the development of green credit and environmental regulation policies has stimulated corporate environmental information disclosure.At the same time,creditors will also consider the potential environmental impact of the company in financing decisions.In addition,the media attention to listed companies is also increasing,and it plays an important role in the dissemination of information and supervision and governance in the exposure of corporate pollution issues.Under this background,what kind of relationship exist between corporate environmental information disclosure and debt financing costs,and what role does the media play in it?In view of this,using the method of fixed effects regression and propensity score matching,taking a sample of A-share 842 heavy pollution industry listed companies which disclosed CSR report voluntarily from 2014 to 2016 to research the influence mechanism of enterprise environmental information disclosure and media attention on debt financing cost,the study found that enterprise environmental information disclosure has a significant negative effect on debt financing cost;The linear moderating effect of the number of media coverage on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and debt financing cost is not significant,but a significant ?positive U-shaped? moderating effect.Further differentiating the market oriented and policy oriented reports,it is found that the coverage of policy oriented newspapers has no significant effect on debt financing cost,however,the negative impact of the market-oriented newspaper reports on debt financing cost is significant;The more significant the pessimistic tone of media reports,the negative correlation between environmental information disclosure and debt financing cost is significantly lower.This research has important theoretical significance and policy implications for further understanding the economic consequences of corporate environmental information disclosure,the governance role of the media,and effectively reducing corporate debt financing cost.