Research on the Impact of Government Environmental Information Disclosure on Green Total Factor Productivity: Empirical Experience from Chinese Province

Government environmental information disclosure is an important means to promote environmental supervision and law enforcement, and improve the level of environmental management. In order to explore the impact of government environmental information disclosure on the sustainability of urban economic growth, this paper uses the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI) to measure the degree of government environmental information disclosure, studies its effect on green total factor productivity through two-way fixed effect model and systematic GMM estimation method, and further adopts threshold model to study whether there is heterogeneity in this effect. The results show that: (1) Each unit of government environmental information disclosure will increase green total factor productivity by 0.2 units. (2) Considering the endogeneity, the promotion of government environmental information disclosure to green total factor productivity has increased. (3) The degree of government environmental information disclosure plays a non-linear role in the path of green total factor productivity. The greater the degree of economic development, the more obvious the effect of government environmental information disclosure on green total factor productivity. Therefore, this paper believes that the government should strengthen the disclosure of environmental information based on the urban economic development to ensure the sustainability of urban economic development.

Will environmental information disclosure affect bank credit decisions and corporate debt financing costs? Evidence from China's heavily polluting industries

In the context of green finance, whether listed companies in heavily polluting industries can convert the external pressure of environmental information disclosure into internal motivation is critical to achieving environmental governance goals. This paper selects 946 listed companies of 16 heavily polluting industries in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets as samples to explore whether environmental information disclosure can help companies increase bank credit support and reduce debt financing costs to transform their external pressures into internal motivation. The empirical results show that there is a significant positive correlation between environmental information disclosure and bank credit decisions. From the perspective of financing scale, heavily polluting companies have the inherent motivation to disclose environmental information actively and proactively to obtain more credit support. There is no significant relationship between the corporate debt financing cost and environmental information disclosure. This paper puts forward some critical policy suggestions for government decision makers, heavily polluting enterprises and financial institutions.

Does Environmental Information Disclosure Affect the Sustainable Development of Enterprises: The Role of Green Innovation

Along with command-and-control and market-incentive environmental regulation policies, environmental information disclosure (EID) is an important measure used by the Chinese government to implement environmental governance. In the context of advocating for corporate sustainable development and green governance, this study uses data from China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in heavily polluting industries spanning 2008–2019 to empirically explore the relationship between corporate EID and green innovation (GI). The results reveal the following: (1) high-quality EID significantly promotes the absolute GI level and the relative GI level of enterprises. (2) An intermediary model found that the internal mechanism of corporate EID used to promote GI mainly comes from the government’s energy-saving innovation subsidy effect and the social media attention effect. (3) Corporate EID has a more evident promotional effect on green patents for energy conservation and green patents for inventions. (4) The EID of state-owned enterprises is more conducive to GI than to the activities of private enterprises. (5) The EID of enterprises in high-level administrative cities has no significant impact on GI. However, it has a significant promoting effect in low-level administrative cities. The research not only provides an empirical basis for China to improve the environmental information disclosure system of listed companies but also to offer guidance for companies to pursue green and sustainable development.