The Impact of Environmental Administrative Penalties on the Disclosure of Environmental Information

Xiangan Ding, Ying Qu and Mohsin Shahzad
Additional contact information
Xiangan Ding: School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Ying Qu: School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Mohsin Shahzad: School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 20, 1-24

Abstract: Stakeholders often have a significant interest in the disclosure of information by companies that have received environmental penalties. This study examines how environmental administrative penalties influence companies’ environmental disclosures. Using a sample of 316 manufacturing companies across three years in China, the regression results indicate that the level of voluntary environmental information disclosure (EID) is significantly positively affected by environmental penalties. For companies in heavily polluting industries, environmental penalties decrease their involuntary EID. Environmental penalties also reduce the quality of environmental information, which is mainly reflected in the weakening of the integrity, comprehensibility, and relevance of environmental information in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports or environmental reports. These findings help us to understand the sustainability of corporate environmental responsibility in the context of environmental administrative penalties.

Keywords: environmental administrative penalty; environmental information disclosure; quality of the environmental information; qualitative characteristics of environmental information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5820/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/20/5820/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:20:p:5820-:d:278473

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().