Research On The Effect Of Central Environmental Protection Inspection On Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure Level

The central environmental protection inspection is a core institutional arrangement to accelerate the construction of ecological civilization and embody the common responsibility of the party and government for environmental protection.Since the launch of the supervision work,it has not only effectively promoted the local party and government to attach importance to environmental protection and urged them to fulfill environmental protection responsibilities,but also effectively solved a large number of environmental pollution problems.Therefore,it has attracted close attention from all walks of life,including scholars.Unlike the regular decentralized governance,the central environmental protection inspection has effectively mobilized all kinds of resources and relied on the authority of the central government to concentrate all efforts and attention on environmental governance through typical campaign-style environmental enforcement.This not only brought huge environmental responsibility pressure to the local government,but also affected the environmental behavior of firms to a certain extent.So,can the central environmental supervision work significantly improve the level of enterprise environmental information disclosure? In view of this problem,this paper will conduct a series of empirical tests on the basis of theoretical analysis and draw a conclusion.The research samples of this paper are the A-share listed firms in the inspection pilot and in the third and fourth rounds of inspected provinces from 2013 to 2016.We select the listed firms located in the Hebei province,the pilot province inspected by the central environmental protection inspection,as the treatment sample and use the listed firms of the third and fourth rounds of inspected provinces,including Tianjin,Shanxi,Liaoning,Jilin,Zhejiang,Shandong and so on,as the control sample.With the difference-in-difference model,we test whether the central environmental protection inspection can promote the level of environmental information disclosure.In addition,in order to further explore the influence of changes in macro and micro conditions on the research conclusions,this paper conducts grouping tests on the samples according to external macro factors such as promotion incentive of local officials,regional economic development level,and according to enterprise micro conditions such as property right nature,industry nature and party organization governance.The results show that,after the inspection from the central environmental protection inspection,the environmental information disclosure level of Hebei listedfirms is improved compared with firms of other regions,which indicates that the central environmental protection inspection plays a significant role in promoting the level of environmental information disclosure.Further research shows that when local officials have greater promotion incentives or the regional economic development level is higher,the positive effect of central environmental protection inspection on environmental information disclosure is more significant.Moreover,the positive effect is more obvious in state-owned firms,heavy polluting firms and firms with party organizations.This paper combines the current hot policy of the central environmental protection inspection with the level of environmental information disclosure,and explores the impact of external macro policy changes on the environmental behavior of micro enterprises through a series of empirical tests.The research conclusions not only enrich the relevant research on the economic consequences of central environmental protection inspection and the influencing factors of environmental information disclosure,but also provides an empirical basis for relevant regulatory departments and policy-making departments to strengthen the construction of environmental protection laws and regulations.There are 3 figures,16 tables and 145 references in this thesis.