Carbon Information Disclosure Quality,Executive Incentive And Corporate Green Innovation

In the context of global climate change,vigorously developing low-carbon economy is an inevitable choice to achieve sustainable development.The report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that we should actively and steadily promote carbon peak and carbon neutrality,and actively participate in the global governance of climate change.As the micro subject of carbon emissions,high-carbon enterprises have the obligation to actively respond to the national "double carbon" strategic objectives,carry out green and low-carbon technology research and development activities,and reduce the carbon emissions of enterprises.In recent years,government departments have successively issued regulations on carbon information disclosure of enterprises,which has increased the importance of enterprises to carbon information disclosure.However,at this stage,China’s enterprises’ carbon information disclosure still belongs to the voluntary disclosure category.Whether enterprises invest a lot of human and material resources to carry out carbon information disclosure can help enterprises improve the level of green innovation and achieve green and low-carbon development of enterprises is a matter of widespread concern from all walks of life.In addition,executive incentive is an effective mechanism to alleviate the conflict of interests between the principal and agent,and also an important way to promote enterprise innovation and research.Existing studies have explored the relationship between environmental information disclosure and enterprise green innovation from the perspective of enterprise external pressure,but few studies have examined the relationship from the perspective of enterprise internal.How the implementation of executive incentive mechanism will affect the relationship between the quality of corporate carbon information disclosure and green innovation has important practical significance for high-carbon enterprises to accelerate the realization of green and low-carbon transformation.This thesis takes China’s A-share high-carbon industry listed companies from 2014 to 2021 as the research sample,empirically tests the effect of carbon information disclosure quality on green innovation of enterprises,and examines the regulatory role of executive compensation incentive and executive equity incentive in this relationship.The research found that:(1)The quality of carbon information disclosure is significantly positively correlated with the level of green innovation of enterprises.After distinguishing the types of green innovation,it is found that the quality of carbon information disclosure has a significant positive impact on invention-based green innovation and practical green innovation.After distinguishing the dimensions of carbon information disclosure,it is found that enterprises’ disclosure of carbon information in three aspects,namely,carbon reduction strategy and response,carbon reduction action and management,carbon reduction performance and incentives,is more conducive to promoting green innovation of enterprises.(2)The regulatory effect test shows that executive compensation incentive and executive equity incentive have a positive regulatory effect between the quality of carbon information disclosure and green innovation of enterprises,that is,the implementation of executive incentive mechanism can strengthen the green innovation promotion effect of the quality of carbon information disclosure.(3)Further analysis shows that the impact of the quality of carbon information disclosure on green innovation of enterprises is heterogeneous,that is,the promotion effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises with strong technology integration ability,and executive compensation incentive plays a more obvious positive regulatory role in state-owned enterprises,and executive equity incentive has a positive regulatory effect in both state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises.The lag effect test indicates that there is a lag in the impact of carbon information disclosure quality on green innovation in enterprises.Based on the above conclusions,this thesis has the following suggestions and implications:(1)The government departments should strengthen the awareness of low-carbon transformation of enterprises by further standardizing the carbon information disclosure criteria,establish and improve the reward and punishment mechanism to increase the cost of illegal disclosure or bad disclosure of enterprises,strengthen the management and guidance of the carbon emissions trading market,and also establish an institutional environment suitable for enterprises to develop long-term investment in green technology as soon as possible,so as to encourage high-carbon enterprises to accelerate the promotion of green innovation level and effectively reduce carbon emissions.(2)High-carbon enterprises not only need to demonstrate their low-carbon competitiveness through improving the quality of carbon information disclosure to obtain the support of external green innovation resources,but also need to continue to improve the incentive and restraint mechanism,enhance the motivation of executives to carry out green innovation research and development through the executive compensation incentive and equity incentive system,and also need to hold the awareness and determination to adhere to carbon information disclosure for a long time to achieve long-term sustainable development of enterprises.