Research On The Relationship Between Environmental Information Disclosure Quality And Financial Performance Of Listed Companies

Under the background of economic globalization,China’s economy is developing at a high speed.At the same time,environmental problems such as ecological damage,waste of resources,water pollution,and air pollution have become increasingly prominent.People’s awareness of environmental protection is constantly increasing,and the country is paying more and more attention to environmental issues,and has promulgated a series of laws and regulations related to environmental protection.As an important participant in the social economy,enterprises cannot blindly pursue short-term economic benefits without bearing social responsibility.Especially for heavily polluting enterprises,their production and operation activities will receive more attention from the public.Such enterprises must consciously assume environmental responsibility,carry out environmental governance activities,and actively disclose environmental information.The disclosure of high-quality environmental information by companies helps to alleviate information asymmetry,meet the external stakeholders’demands of environmental information,send the signal that the company has actively fulfilled environmental responsibilities to investors,consumers,governments and other stakeholders,and accumulate good social reputation,which in turn attracts investment,consumption and other resources,and improves corporate financial performance by increasing cash flow and reducing capital costs.However,because China does not have uniform and clear regulations on environmental information disclosure at present,and some companies consider that improving environmental performance will pay a certain cost,the status quo of environmental information disclosure is not optimistic,and there are problems in both content and ways of disclosure.Based on the above background,this paper aims to research the relationship between environmental information disclosure quality and financial performance,and at the same time divide environmental information into financial and non-financial categories,further explore the role of classified environmental information disclosure quality on financial performance,discover the inherent motivation to improve the quality of environmental information disclosure.From the perspective of technological innovation,this paper explores the regulatory effect of technological innovation investment on the relationship between environmental information disclosure quality and financial performance.This paper reviews the relevant literature,and is based on the sustainable development theory,stakeholder theory,information asymmetry theory,and social reputation theory.In the research the environmental information is subdivided into environmental financial information and environmental non-financial information.And then the relationship between environmental information disclosure quality and financial performance,and the relationship between classified environmental information disclosure quality and financial performance are analyzed theoretically.At the same time,the regulatory effect of technological innovation is analyzed,and corresponding research hypotheses are proposed.The listed chemical companies in the heavily polluting industries from 2014 to 2018 were selected as research samples for empirical inspection and analysis.The following conclusions are drawn:First,the quality of environmental information disclosure of heavily polluting companies such as chemical companies in China is generally low,but in recent years,with the improvement of relevant laws and guidelines and the improvement of corporate environmental awareness,both the quality and ways of environmental information disclosure has improved.Second,the quality of corporate environmental information disclosure will have a significant positive impact on financial performance,and there is a lag in this impact.Besides the environmental financial information and environmental non-financial information will receive the attention of stakeholders.The improvement of the quality of both types of environmental information disclosure is conducive to significantly improving financial performance.Third,technological innovation will positively regulate the positive correlation between the quality of environmental information disclosure and financial performance,that is,the technological innovation of enterprises That is to say,when companies increase their investment in technological innovation,they carry out environmental protection activities and disclose environmental information,which will be more conducive to the improvement of financial performance.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,this paper proposes countermeasures to improve the quality of environmental information disclosure and corporate financial performance from a government perspective and an enterprise perspective.