Environmental Ethics Unveiled: Navigating the Nexus Between Government Divestiture and Environmental Investment

Farman Ullah Khan, Sajid Ullah, Fawad Rauf, Junrui Zhang and Daniela Harangus

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2025, vol. 34, issue 4, 2210-2225

Abstract: This study examines the impact of government divestiture on corporate environmental investment (EI) and investigates how regional development moderates this relationship. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2022, we employ a fixed‐effect model to analyze the data. Our findings reveal a negative effect of government divestiture on EI. Furthermore, we observe that regional development mitigates this negative impact, indicating that firms operating in developed environments are more inclined to prioritize environmental concerns, likely due to increased stakeholder monitoring. To address concerns regarding endogeneity, we utilize propensity score matching (PSM), Heckman tests, and the generalized method of moments (GMM). Overall, our results carry significant policy implications, particularly regarding the environmental consequences of privatization in emerging markets like China.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12763

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:buseth:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:2210-2225

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().