Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Chen, Hong Tao
• Han, Wei
• An, Mao Lin

Titel

Regional Fiscal Competition and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure: Provincial-Level Evidence From China

Ist Teil von

• Tropical conservation science, 2019-04, Vol.12 (1), p.194008291983991

Ort / Verlag

Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek - Frei zugängliche E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The race to the bottom theory of environmental regulation mainly refers to state or local governments competing to lower their environmental regulation standards in pursuit of their own interests. Since the reform of the Chinese tax distribution system in 1994, local governments have encouraged economic competition through various industrial subsidies and tax preferences. Moreover, in China’s political system, which promotes fiscal decentralization and economic competition, competition has provided local governments with the opportunity to race to the bottom by secretly reducing the environmental regulations of enterprises to obtain financial returns and promote capital. Using the race to the bottom theory of environmental regulation, this article identifies the land revenue data and environmental information disclosure (EID) quality data of listed companies in China from 2012 to 2014 and uses the hierarchical linear model to study the direct and indirect effects of local governments’ financial competition on the EID of listed companies in their jurisdictions. It was found that (a) Regional financial competition does not directly influence the quality of an enterprise’s EID but has a significant negative regulatory effect. (b) The higher the degree of regional competition, the more obvious the negative regulatory effect. (c) The financial competitiveness of tropical and subtropical regions in China is higher than that of other regions, and the EID quality of enterprises in these regions is lower. (d) Governmental financial competition in tropical and subtropical regions regulates the quality of EID of listed companies in their jurisdictions through indirect effects on enterprises with different ownership and profitability; However, with the exception of tropical and subtropical regions, this phenomenon is not significant in other provinces.