Environmental Performance And The Impact Of Green Credit Policies On Corporate Debt Financing

Green sustainable development is an important future direction of China's financial industry.Commercial banks become the front filed of China's green financial practice because of the implementation of green credit policy.The introduction of environmental performance into bank credit is one of the prerequisites for the effective implementation of green credit policy and the effective restriction of polluting investment through the adjustment of credit structure,so as to make the economy transform into an green and sustainable way.Necessary environmental information has been provided for banks to implement green credit,with the stricter environmental protection laws and regulations and the ever-increasing level of environmental information disclosure of enterprises.This paper analyzes whether the enterprise's environmental performance affects its debt financing ability,discusses whether banks make reasonable use of the environmental performance information when making loans.To discuss the effect of green credit policy,the paper takes the publication of the green credit guidelines as a treatment,examines whether green credit guidelines restricted the debt financing ability of heavily polluting enterprises,deepened the relationship between environmental performance and debt financing.Based on the data of 804 A-share listed companies disclosed in Hexun's social responsibility score from 2009 to 2018,which are divided into heavy pollution and nonheavy pollution groups by referring to the classification management directory of environmental-inspection-needed industries of listed companies.Taking the scale and cost of debt financing as dependent variables,this paper examines the impact of environmental performance and green credit policy on enterprises' debt financing.This paper constructs the core explanatory variable environmental performance index with reference to Hexun social responsibility score on the basis of the environmental information disclosed by enterprises and the external supervision,and examines the relationship between environmental performance and debt financing using panel regression model.Dividing the pre-and post-treatment periods by the implementation of the green credit guidelines and using heavy-polluting companies as the experimental group,this paper uses panel regression and DID model to analyze the effect of the green credit policy.This paper mainly discusses two problems.First,whether the environmental performance of enterprises affects the scale and cost of debt financing.Second,whether the implementation of green credit policy constrains the debt financing of heavypolluting enterprises by reducing the scale of debt financing and improving the cost of debt financing.Finally,the results support following conclusions:(1)The environmental performance and debt financing scale of heavy-polluting companies enterprises are positively correlated,that is,enterprises with better the environmental performance received more debt financing,the implementation of green credit classification management and inspiring policies of banks' have prompted banks to voluntarily lend to enterprises with better environmental performance;(2)There is no obvious correlation between the environmental performance and the cost of debt financing,environmental factors have no impact on the default risk of enterprises,and banks haven't implement differentiated environmental risk management in loan pricing yet,so enterprises with good environmental performance have no significant advantages in debt financing cost;(3)The publication of green credit guidelines has reduced the debt financing scale of heavy-polluting enterprises,and shows continuing effect on the restriction effect for many years.Therefore,the policy has optimized banks' credit structure and supported green companies.(4)The publication of green credit guidelines only affected the debt financing cost of heavy-polluting enterprises in the short term,having no obvious long-term impact on the debt financing cost.For enterprises whose environmental performance has reached the credit threshold,further environmental risk management has not yet finalized by banks,as well as further differentiated environmental risk management in loan pricing.The imperfection of the environmental accounting and auditing system and the lack of motivation for the differential environmental risk management in the loan pricing should be the main reasons of the failure of further utilization of the environmental performance information in the loan pricing.This paper puts forward the following suggestions:(1)In the aspect of environmental performance information sharing,it is necessary to promote a green information platform shared by enterprises,environmental protection departments,financial institutions and the public;(2)In the aspect of environmental performance information evaluation,it is necessary to implement a standardized environmental information disclosure system and try to establish an environmental evaluation system for special industries;(3)In the aspect of green credit policy,it is necessary to promote environment risk management in the whole process of loans.For regulators,the green credit evaluation system of banking financial institutions should be improved,as well as the evaluation system of banks' implementation of environmental risk management.For banks,further implementation of the environmental risk evaluation and grading system in loan pricing is need,and promotion green financial products innovation is of vital importance as well.This paper enriches the empirical research in the field of environmental performance and debt financing,and evaluates the implementation effect of green credit policy from multiple perspectives by analyzing the results of both fixed effect and DID model.This paper improves the construction of environmental performance indicators by using third-party scoring agencies and public environmental penalty data,so as to provide new ideas of building reasonable and comprehensive environmental performance indicators.Though,some shortcomings also exist.First,the sample of listed companies which have disclosed social responsibility reports cannot fully represent the situation of all enterprises,and the sample selection bias brought by voluntary environmental information disclosure may affect the empirical results to some extent.Second,the paper uses financial data of enterprises as the variable of debt financing cost,which may affect the accuracy of the empirical results.