Executive Digital Expertise And Corporate Carbon Information Disclosure

In the 21 st century,with the acceleration of the industrialization process and the development of the economy,all kinds of pollutants,especially carbon emissions,have shown a continuous upward trend.Under such circumstance,the ecosystem has been seriously damaged.As more people become aware of global warming and other serious environmental issues,the government is under pressure to enact more laws to protect the environment.To this goal,the Chinese government has created necessary rules and regulations and implemented energy management policies to limit the carbon emissions of coporates to a tolerable level.Chinese corporations are urged by the government to disclose carbon emissions data to some extent in order to further regulate the carbon emissions of corporates.However,the quality of carbon information disclosure is still unsatisfactory.In order to better improve the quality of carbon information disclosure,it is necessary to deeply study its influencing factors and mechanisms.Exectives are the makers and implementers of enterprise strategies.The existing cognitive structure and values of managers determine their explanatory power of relevant information,and then affect corporate business decisions.From the perspective of digital economy,taking China’s A-share manufacturing listed companies as the research sample,this paper explores the impact of executive digital expertise on corporate carbon information disclosure.The results of this study show that:(1)The quality of carbon information disclosure of listed companies in China is still low in general with lots of problems,such as incomplete disclosure of key information,mainly qualitative disclosure,and different disclosure caliber.(2)There is a significant negative correlation between executive digital expertise and corporate carbon information disclosure.This paper believes that there are mainly two reasons.For one thing,based on the Upper Echelons Theory and Imprinting Theory,executives with natural science background prefer low-quality carbon information disclosure.For another,based on the information security problems brought by digital transformation,enterprises may avoid information leakage and litigation disputes caused by unnecessary information disclosure.(3)The nature of property rights of coporates and the level of digital economy have an obvious regulatory effect on the relationship between executive digital expertise and the quality of corporate carbon information disclosure,while the regulatory effect of the level of internal control and media attention is relatively weak.After tackling the problem of endogeneity,replacing samples or variables and finishing many other robustness tests,the empirical conclusion is still valid.Based on theoretical and empirical analysis,this paper makes a conclusion and puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.On the one hand,corporates,especially the executives,need to realize that carbon information disclosure is not antagonistic to the maximization of enterprise interests.At the same time,executives should avoid possible information leakage caused by digitalization and disclose carbon information reasonably and effectively.On the other hand,the government must enhance pertinent rules and regulations,supervise the corporate carbon information disclosure in a multi-dimensional way,support the long-term growth of the low-carbon economy,and achieve the dual-carbon target as soon as possible.