Study On The Peer Effect Of Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure

In today’s society,corporate responsibility for the environment is becoming a strategic business imperative.On the one hand,companies can disclose environmental information on an autonomous basis to gain a competitive advantage.On the other hand,companies may be passive in their environmental disclosure responsibilities,not only because listed companies need to cooperate with the securities regulatory authorities in issuing environmental reports,but also because management,in the process of making environmental disclosure decisions,follows the environmental disclosure of peer companies in order to maintain their ’social image’ and thus actively engage in environmental disclosure to bridge the legitimacy gap,control risk and reduce investment losses.If companies respond to environmental disclosure by their peers,what impact does this have on their economic performance? Based on the above analysis,it is necessary to test the existence of the peer effect of corporate environmental information disclosure and to explore the influencing factors and economic effects of the peer effect of environmental information disclosure.This study first summarizes previous research results,analyzes the influence mechanism of peer corporate environmental information disclosure behavior based on the concepts and theories of corporate environmental information disclosure and peer effect,proposes corresponding research hypotheses,builds an empirical model to verify the existence of peer effect of corporate environmental information,explores industry heterogeneity and geographical heterogeneity of peer effect of corporate environmental information disclosure using group regression,and further analyzes the relationship between industry peers and regional peers on corporate environmental information disclosure behavior,i.e.,whether there is a complementary or substitution effect.We use group regression to explore the industry heterogeneity and geographical heterogeneity of corporate environmental information disclosure peer effect,and further analyze the relationship between industry peers and regional peers on corporate environmental information disclosure behavior,i.e.,whether there is a complementary or alternative effect.Finally,the economic effects of the peer effect are analyzed from the perspective of total factor productivity.This paper takes the quality of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in China’s A-share heavy pollution industry from 2008-2021 as the research sample,and the empirical analysis finds that:(1)The quality of environmental information disclosure of enterprises is influenced by the disclosure level of peer enterprises,which has a significant peer effect.Further research found that the peer effect is industry heterogeneous and region heterogeneous,with the peer effect being most significant in the very heavy pollution level and the eastern region;industry peers and regional peers have a significant substitution relationship in terms of their influence on the responsibility of enterprises to undertake environmental information disclosure.(2)The degree of industry competition and the nature of property rights have significant influence on the peer effect of environmental information disclosure.As the degree of industry competition increases,the more significant the influence of peer enterprise environmental information disclosure behaviour on the disclosure behaviour of individual enterprises,there is a positive moderating effect;compared with state-owned enterprises,the peer effect of environmental information disclosure of non-state-owned enterprises is more obvious.(3)Environmental information disclosure peer behavior significantly contributes to the total factor productivity of enterprises,in which the strength of industry peer effect and the strength of regional peer effect are both significantly and positively related to total factor productivity.This paper provides policy recommendations for regulators to guide individual enterprises to fulfil their environmental protection responsibilities and improve the overall level of environmental information disclosure in terms of the degree of market competition and variability in the nature of property rights,regional and industrial heterogeneity,and strengthening the degree of corporate communication.The research innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)Compared with previous literatures on corporate environmental information disclosure,this paper innovatively takes peer effect as a starting point,explores the motivation of enterprises to fulfill their environmental responsibility and disclose environmental information from two dimensions of industry and region,and examines the exogenous influence of peer enterprises’ environmental information disclosure level on individual enterprises’ environmental information disclosure behavior.Further expand the research perspective and content of corporate environmental information disclosure.(2)On the basis of testing the obvious peer effect of environmental information disclosure behavior of listed companies,this paper explains why environmental information disclosure behavior is clustered in industries or regions,and further tests its influence on the total factor productivity of enterprises by introducing the variable peer effect intensity,which expands the research results on the economic consequences of peer effect.It deepens enterprises’ understanding of the economic benefits of undertaking the responsibility of environmental information disclosure.