Corporate environmental information disclosure and investor response: Evidence from China's capital market

Jia Meng and ZhongXiang Zhang

Energy Economics, 2022, vol. 108, issue C

Abstract: This paper aims at analyzing the impact of corporate environmental information disclosure from the perspective of investors. To that end, we have collected environmental information disclosure data of all Chinese listed companies from 2004 to 2020 and controlled the impacts of annual reports on investor response. We apply the Fama-French five-factor model to calculate the accumulative abnormal returns of stocks during the event window period. Our results suggest that environmental information disclosure can have a significant negative response among investors when we take the impacts of annual reports into consideration. Moreover, we find that heavy-polluting companies and companies with high institutional shareholding are more likely to have negative reactions from investors. Notably, the negative response is found significant after the Ambient Air Quality Standard was revised in 2012. Furthermore, high environmental expenditure and strict environmental regulation will result in negative investor responses, while the political connection can alleviate the negative impacts of environmental information disclosure. The results remain robust in different ways. The findings suggest that listed companies may lack the incentive to engage in environmental management and are reluctant to disclose environmental information. Consequently, the government should formulate a mandatory disclosure policy and provide administrative support to environmental-friendly companies. Besides, companies should improve innovation technology to cut down environmental costs. Meanwhile, investors should be aware of the importance of corporate environmental behaviors and realize the long-term benefits of environmental management of listed companies.

Keywords: Environmental information disclosure; Investor response; Corporate annual reports; Fama-french five-factor model; China's capital market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988322000688
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:eneeco:v:108:y:2022:i:c:s0140988322000688

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2022.105886

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().