| The construction of an environmental information disclosure system is a key element in the construction of ecological civilisation in China and an environmental management system that enterprises urgently need to improve.The establishment and improvement of a mandatory environmental information disclosure system is a general trend and an important step in reflecting the country’s ability to govern ecological civilisation.The process of changing from voluntary to mandatory disclosure of environmental information is an inevitable requirement for China to move towards green and high-quality transformation and development,but it also has different degrees of impact on the construction and development of enterprises’ systems.With the birth of the new Environmental Protection Law and the need to develop an ecological civilisation,the requirements of China’s environmental information disclosure system have been strengthened and the concept of promoting high-quality economic development has taken root.However,whether these new systems can improve the financial performance of enterprises while bringing increased costs to them is an important concern for many enterprises and society,so it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the impact of environmental information disclosure systems on the financial performance of enterprises.First,this paper takes 2015 as the time point,uses the new Environmental Protection Law and the Approach to Environmental Information Disclosure to represent the mandatory policy on environmental information disclosure,takes the implementation of this policy as an exogenous shock variable,and uses2926 domestic listed companies that published environmental information-related reports from 2013-2021 as the observation sample.Secondly,Introduction of corporate environmental governance line as a mediating variable,and also in order to more precisely analyse the mechanism of the role of different types of environmental governance behaviours.This paper further divides behaviours into three dimensions: corporate environmental management behaviours,environmental governance performance and communication with stakeholders(MNG,PER,PUB).Finally,the heterogeneous effects of mandatory environmental information disclosure on firms’ financial performance are investigated based on firms with different property rights and different regions of environmental regulation intensity.The empirical results demonstrate that,firstly,the implementation of mandatory environmental information disclosure policies improves corporate financial performance.Secondly,there is a time lag in the implementation and functioning of the policy.Third,this facilitative effect is mainly achieved through the first two paths in corporate environmental governance behaviour,which improve corporate environmental management behaviour and enhance corporate environmental governance performance,while the third path is not significantly mediated by communication with stakeholders.Fourth,the implementation of mandatory environmental information disclosure policies has different impacts on firms with different property rights and in different regions,with a greater value-enhancing promotion effect on state-owned enterprises and firms in regions with weaker environmental regulations.Based on the above research,the paper concludes that in order to promote the green and high-quality transformation of China’s economy,the government and financial regulators need to further strengthen the formulation and implementation of mandatory environmental information disclosure policies,and enhance education and publicity on environmental information disclosure.At the same time,micro-enterprises should actively engage in internal environmental governance and disclose environmental information to stakeholders. |
