Environmental Assessment,Promotion Motivation And Corporate Environmental Violations

With the development of the economy,the environmental problem has become more and more serious in China,the environmental pollution accidents occur frequently in various regions.To solve the negative externality problem caused by the long-term extensive economic development model,change the regional governance concept of the “GDPonly” theory,the central government has gradually carried out the reform of the official evaluation system to encourage local governments to actively carry out pollution prevention work in their respective jurisdictions.The goal of environmental protection was formally incorporated into the personnel assessment system of local government officials in 2007 and achieved a "one-vote veto" in environmental protection assessment.The reform of the environmental protection assessment system has gradually played an essential role in China’s regional environmental governance and more and more pieces of literature focus on the impact of changes in environmental assessment on regional environmental governance,but there is a relative lack of research on the impact of officials’ political incentives on enterprises.Therefore,this thesis studies the impact of local officials’ political incentives on corporate environmental violations from the micro-level,which is of great significance in the context of the current pursuit of environmental protection and economic development.This thesis mainly researches the incentives and governance motivations of local government officials in responding to corporate environmental violations,and mainly researches these two questions:(1)Under the background of environmental protection assessment,will local officials guide companies to reduce their environmental violations?(2)When facing the same pressure of environmental protection assessment,is there heterogeneity among firms in reducing environmental violations?For this,this thesis is based on a sample of companies in the heavily polluting industries listed in China from 2008 to 2018,collects and organizes the violation data of the corporate environment through IPE,and conducts an empirical analysis on the above two research questions.The research result claims that in areas with more serious environmental pollution under the new environmental protection assessment system,the non-retired governor of the province is more effective in promoting local companies to reduce environmental violations than the governor of the province who is close to retirement.Besides,the thesis also finds that the inhibitory effect on corporate environmental violations is more pronounced in companies early in the CEO’s tenures and in companies where the executive is politically connected.The research result of this thesis passed endogeneity checks and robustness tests.The findings of this thesis also provide enterprise-level research evidence for the practical effect of the environmental protection assessment system,and it has certain reference significance for countries with economies in transition to solve the problem of corporate environmental violations.