Can anti-corruption improve the quality of environmental information disclosure?

Abstract

\n This study takes the anti-corruption campaign of the 18th CPC National Congress in China as an exogenous impact, using the data of heavy polluting enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share manufacturing industry over 2008–2018 and the local level data to build a double difference (DID) model, which proves that anti-corruption can increase the quality of enterprise environmental information disclosure significantly. After a series of tests such as parallel trend test and placebo test, the results are still robust. The intermediary effect model results indicate that the anti-corruption increases the violation cost of enterprises and encourages enterprises to carry out innovation activities, and ultimately increase the quality of enterprise environmental information disclosure. Considering that enterprise nature, enterprise size, and the environmental supervision strength will influence the quality of enterprise environmental information disclosure differently. We further construct a group regression model for heterogeneity analysis and finds that non-state-owned enterprises, large enterprises and regions with more substantial environmental supervision will improve the quality of enterprise environmental information disclosure to a greater extent. The findings of paper can help understand the internal mechanism between anti-corruption and corporate environmental information disclosure and provide empirical evidence for the implementation of mandatory environmental information disclosure policy.