Institutional Pressure,Top Management Team Characteristics And Corporate Environmental Information Greenwashing

With the continuous advancement of China's comprehensively deepening the reform,the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection has become increasingly prominent.As the main body of social economy,the enterprises and their environmental responsibilities has naturally become the focus of attention.As an important channel for the outside world to understand the information of corporate environmental activities,environmental information disclosure is an important link for enterprises to accept social supervision and fulfill their environmental responsibility,and is also one of the important mechanisms for environmental governance.However,in practice,companies mainly disclose positive and difficult-to-verify descriptive information,while disclosure of material information such as resource consumption and pollutant emissions that may have a negative impact is less disclosed.Environmental information has been “greenwashed” in the process of environmental information.Greenwashinging of corporate environmental information cannot enable environmental protection authorities and the public to understand the true environmental responsibility of enterprises.What is the impact of the increasingly stringent environmental protection-related policy system,public concern,etc.on the environmental greenwashinging of enterprises? What role does the executive play in it? these questions is the focus of this thesis.This thesis first summarizes the research status of greenwashing and environmental information greenwashing at home and abroad,and defines environmental information greenwashing and related concepts.On this basis,from the perspective of environmental information disclosure,the symbolic and substantive environmental information disclosure methods are identified,the environmental information greenwashing index is designed,and the impact on environmental information greenwashing is discussed from institutional pressure and top management team.This thesis takes A-share listed companies that have issued social responsibility reports for six consecutive years from 2011 to 2016 as a sample to examine the impact of institutional pressure and characteristics of executive team.The study found that:(1)Mandatory institutional pressures inhibit corporate environmental information greenwashing.The imitative system pressure has intensified the greenwashing,and the normative system pressure is negatively related to the greenwashing,but it is not significant.(2)The size and average age of the top management team are negatively related to the environmental information greenwashing.The educational background and average tenure of the top management team are positively related to the environmental information greenwashing.The heterogeneity of executive team's education are negatively related to the environmental information greenwashing,there is no significant correlation between other characteristics and greenwashing.(3)The homogeneity characteristics of the top management team,including the female executives of the top management team and the tenure of office of the top management team,have a regulatory role between the mandatory institutional pressure and the imitation system pressure and the corporate environmental information greenwashing.The heterogeneity characteristics of the top management team,including heterogeneity of age and gender,have a regulatory role between mandatory institutional pressures and imitation institutional pressures and corporate environmental information greenwashing.Other characteristics have no adjustment effect between institutional pressure and corporate environmental information greenwashing.The contribution of this thesis lies in: Firstly,from the perspective of environmental information disclosure,the symbolic and substantive environmental information disclosure is identified,and the environmental information greenwashing index is designed to enrich the empirical research related to greenwashing.Secondly,the thesis discusses the influence of institutional pressure and characteristics of top management team on the environmental information greenwashing and the specific mechanism,and uncovers the "black box" of the research on the influencing factors of corporate environmental information greenwashing.The research in this thesis provides new ideas for establishing a regulatory and binding mechanism for environmental information,and it is beneficial for consumers and investors to understand greenwashing from a new perspective and provide corresponding services for government regulators,non-government environmental organizations,managers and decision makers and also help to reduce the incidence of corporate environmental information greenwashing.