Environmental Information Disclosure Quality,Internal Control And Debt Financing Cost

In recent years,debt financing is still the main external financing channel for Chinese enterprises,and the debt financing cost is a key indicator that enterprise managers consider in their daily business decisions.Excessive debt financing costs will constrain the overall financing ability of the enterprise,making it difficult to obtain sufficient external funds,which will affect the growth and development of the enterprise.Therefore,how to effectively reduce the debt financing cost of enterprises has become the focus of attention and research in academic circles at home and abroad.With the frequent occurrence of environmental pollution incidents in China at this stage,as the main manufacturer of environmental problems,the environmental performance of enterprises has gradually become the focus of attention of all sectors of society.In order to effectively curb corporate environmental pollution behavior,the government departments have successively issued a series of environmental laws and regulations,including the green credit policy promulgated in 2007 and 2012,which links environmental protection and corporate finance,and improves corporate disclosure environment.The enthusiasm of information and the environmental information disclosed by enterprises have also become an important basis for creditor investment decisions.Therefore,whether the quality of environmental information disclosure will affect the cost of debt financing becomes a problem worth exploring.At the same time,internal control,as an important internal governance mechanism of enterprises,can reflect the level of business risks and the reliability of financial information.It is also of significance to study the impact of internal control on debt financing costs.On this basis,the paper further links the quality of environmental information disclosure with internal control,and explores the substitution effect of the two on the impact of debt financing costs,which is conducive to providing theoretical guidance for enterprise decision-making.In view of this,based on the existing research results,this paper makes an in-depth analysis of the internal relationship and mechanism of environmental information disclosure quality,internal control and debt financing costs,and preliminary analysis of the status quo of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in China.Finally,this paper takes 3443 listed companies in the heavily polluting industries of Shanghai and Shenzhen in 2013-2017 as a sample,empirically tests the impact of environmental information disclosure quality and internal control on debt financing costs,and further tests the substitution effect between the quality of environmental information disclosure and internal control.The empirical results show that:(1)the quality of environmental information disclosure is negatively correlated with the cost of debt financing;(2)the quality of internal control is negatively correlated with the cost of debt financing;(3)Due to the limitation of resource constraints,in enterprises with high internal control quality,the negative impact of environmental information disclosure quality on debt financing costs is weak.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,policy recommendations are proposed from the perspective of government,enterprises and investors.