Environmental violations and financial distress risk: Evidence from Chinese listed heavily polluting companies

Kai Xing, Fang Yang, Ping Liu, Jue Wang and Junchuan Wu

Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 2025, vol. 89, issue C

Abstract: This study uses data from Chinese A-share listed companies in heavily polluting industries from 2012 to 2021 to investigate the influence of environmental violations on the risk of financial distress. Empirical results show that if a company is involved in environmental violations, the probability of experiencing financial distress increases. This finding is validated through a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that environmental violations exacerbate financial distress through two channels: increased financing constraints and decreased internal control quality. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the aggravating effect of environmental violations on financial distress is stronger in firms with high levels of information asymmetry and low female representation on the board of directors. Further analysis finds that the new Environmental Protection Law has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between environmental violations and financial distress. These findings provide important insights into how corporate governance and legislation can protect the environment and achieve sustainable development.

Keywords: Environmental violations; Financial distress risk; Agency theory; New environmental protection law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X24003354
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:pacfin:v:89:y:2025:i:c:s0927538x24003354

DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102583

Access Statistics for this article

Pacific-Basin Finance Journal is currently edited by K. Chan and S. Ghon Rhee

More articles in Pacific-Basin Finance Journal from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().