An Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Ownership Structure And Environmental Protection Investments Of Firms

In recent years,China’s economy and society have developed rapidly,but at the same time,the environment has also been greatly damaged:the environmental problems caused by industrial three-waste emissions exceeding standards,water pollution,land pollution and other development processes have made the ecological situation increasingly severe.Seriously affect people’s quality of life.To achieve the goal of sustainable development,we cannot rely solely on the government to use administrative ways to improve the environment.Enterprises are the main players in China’s market economy and the main producers of environmental pollution.According to the principle of "who pollutes who is governed" formulated by China’s Environmental Protection Law,enterprises should assume the responsibility of protecting the environment and carry out a series of environmental protection investments.The final plan for business decision-making is generated by the shareholders’ meeting.Different ownership structure characteristics will produce different results for the enterprise investment decision,and environmental investment as part of the enterprise investment will inevitably be affected by the shareholding structure.Therefore,studying the impact of corporate equity structure on environmental protection investment is of great significance for solving China’s environmental problems.This paper first analyzes the relevant research results of environmental protection investment,ownership structure and corporate social responsibility from different aspects at home and abroad,defines the concept of corporate environmental protection investment and ownership structure.Based on the theory of equity structure,corporate social responsibility theory and sustainable development theory,the paper analyzes the impact mechanism of ownership structure on corporate environmental protection investmentand puts forward reasonable assumptions.Then uses listed companies which disclosed the environmental protection investment data in Shanghai and Shenzhen during 2012-2017 for the study,and the panel model is established to empirically study the impact of corporate ownership structure on environmental protection investment,and the regression results are robust test.The research results show that state-owned enterprises have invested more environmental protection funds than non-state-owned enterprises:equity concentration is significantly positively correlated with corporate environmental protection investment:equity balance is significantly positively related to corporate environmental investment.and regression results between institutional investors’ shareholding and environmental investment is inconsistent with the assumptions.Based on the internal governance factor of ownership strueture.this paper conducts an empirical study on the factors affecting the environmental protcetion investment of Chinese enterprises,and provides a new vision for the research of environmental protection investment in China.According to the empirical results of this paper and in combination with the special back ground of China,this thesis puts forward some relevant policy recommendations for improving the environmental protection investment of listed companies in China,and analyzes the future research direction of the paper.