| Since the concept of "green finance" was formally raised in 2016,green credit,green funds and other green products have successively entered the public’s vision,but the development of typical green insurance,namely environmental pollution liability insurance,has been significantly hindered,facing the dilemma of "low interest on both sides of supply and demand".From the perspective of suppliers,insurance companies are reluctant to cover such high-risk and high compensation insurance objects,and lack of historical data to determine the accurate premium level;From the perspective of the demander,the pollution cost of listed companies of heavy pollution industry is still at a low level,and enterprises lack the motivation to take the initiative to insure.In view of the above two aspects of reality,this paper based on the enterprises that purchased environmental pollution liability insurance in 2014 and 2015 announced by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment,uses the mixed OLS method to regress and analyze the impact of enterprises’ environmental pollution liability insurance on their environmental protection behavior,describe the significance of this study from two aspects.The first is to help enterprises realize that in the context of stricter environmental regulation,environmental pollution liability insurance can promote enterprises to take more environmental protection actions,enhance enterprise value,and thus enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises.The second is to show the benefits of environmental pollution liability insurance for enterprises to the environment,industry and individuals.It is hoped that the national level will increase support for environmental pollution liability insurance.This paper selects the listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share heavy pollution industries in 2014 and 2015 as the research samples,in which the green innovation data is from the annual report of listed companies and CSMAR database and the green innovation data is from CNRDS database.In this paper,the independent variable is whether the enterprise is insured for environmental pollution liability insurance.And the environmental protection behavior is the dependent variable,the environmental protection behavior is comprehensively measured by environmental protection investment and green innovation.Secondly,it further analyzes the changes in the shareholding ratio of institutional investors after the enterprises cover the environmental pollution liability insurance,and tests whether enterprises have the behavior of "green floating" to take on pseudo social responsibility and obtain implicit benefits by insurance of environmental pollution liability.In addition,the medidating effect of environmental information disclosure and debt financing costs was tested.Furthermore,the heterogeneity of regression results is analyzed from three aspects: the nature of property rights,the region and the local government’s environmental regulatory efforts.Finally,test the robustness of the main regression results of this paper.This test is realized by two methods,one is to change the independent variables,namely the measurement method of environmental investment and green innovation,and the other is to adjust the sample size.It can be seen from the regression that for environmental protection investment,the positive impact of environmental pollution liability insurance is more notable in non-state-owned enterprises,more notable in other regions outside the eastern region,and more significant in areas with strong supervision.For green innovation,the positive impact is more remarkable in non-state-owned enterprises.The positive impact in the eastern region is not different from that in other regions,and the latter is slightly stronger.The impact of regulatory intensity on it is not different,but the positive impact is slightly stronger in weak regulatory areas.Through the regression results,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)Enterprises’ insurance of environmental pollution liability will promote enterprises to take more environmental protection actions,including environmental investment and green innovation;(2)Enterprise’s environmental pollution liability insurance has a significant positive impact on the shareholding ratio of institutional investors,which can effectively enhance corporate value;(3)Enterprise’s environmental pollution liability insurance can significantly reduce the cost of debt financing,thus verifying that the capital market provides implicit support for enterprise insurance.(4)Enterprises taking out environmental pollution liability insurance can positively influence environmental protection investment by enhancing environmental information disclosure,and can positively influence green innovation by reducing debt financing costs.Finally,this article proposes relevant policy recommendations from three aspects: enterprises,insurance companies,and the government:advocating for enhancing environmental risk awareness,optimizing talent training systems,and innovating insurance products. |
