He Yu, Zhang Yulan, Zhang Xingyan
School of Finance, Chongqing Technology and Business University, 19 Xuefu Road, Nan'an District, Chongqing, 400067, China.
School of Finance, Chongqing Technology and Business University, 19 Xuefu Road, Nan'an District, Chongqing, 400067, China.
J Environ Manage. 2025 Jan;373:123495. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.123495. Epub 2024 Dec 1.
Compared with traditional financing, green financing has certain advantages in promoting firms' green transformation and advancing sustainable social development, as related funds are primarily used for environmental project investments and interest rates are relatively lower. Therefore, improving corporate green financing capability is a valuable topic for research, particularly for heavy polluting firms. Corporate voluntary environmental information disclosure (EID), i.e., a new type of informal voluntary environmental regulation, may be an effective way to improve firms' green financing capabilities, as it can provide corporate environmental information to financial institutions and reduce the information gap. However, limited studies have explored the potential relationship between them. To fill this gap, our study adopts panel data of heavy polluting firms during 2008-2022 to explore whether and how voluntary EID affects corporate green financing capabilities in China. Benchmark, robustness, and endogeneity tests confirm that the more environmental information is voluntarily disclosed on different aspects, the better corporate green financing capability will be enhanced. In addition, we conduct several supplementary tests for in-depth exploration, with three notable findings. First, corporate voluntary EID has a stronger influence on green financing capability when a firm has more environmental protection investments and higher returns on such investments. Second, voluntary EID has a stronger impact on non-politically connected firms (in the eastern region) than on politically connect firms (in middle and western regions). Third, voluntary EID can improve firms' green financing capabilities, which increases research and development investments and improves green total factor productivity. Our study confirms the significance of corporate voluntary EID in improving green financing capability and further promoting sustainable social development, in addition to providing recommendations for policymakers and corporate managers on how to enhance corporate green financing capability.
与传统融资相比，绿色融资在促进企业绿色转型和推动社会可持续发展方面具有一定优势，因为相关资金主要用于环境项目投资且利率相对较低。因此，提高企业绿色融资能力是一个值得研究的课题，特别是对于重污染企业而言。企业自愿性环境信息披露（EID），即一种新型的非正式自愿性环境规制，可能是提高企业绿色融资能力的有效途径，因为它可以向金融机构提供企业环境信息并缩小信息差距。然而，鲜有研究探讨它们之间的潜在关系。为填补这一空白，我们的研究采用了2008 - 2022年重污染企业的面板数据，以探究自愿性EID是否以及如何影响中国企业的绿色融资能力。基准测试、稳健性测试和内生性测试证实，在不同方面自愿披露的环境信息越多，企业绿色融资能力提升得就越好。此外，我们进行了多项补充测试以进行深入探究，有三个显著发现。第一，当企业有更多的环境保护投资且此类投资回报率较高时，企业自愿性EID对绿色融资能力的影响更强。第二，自愿性EID对非政治关联企业（东部地区）的影响比对政治关联企业（中西部地区）的影响更强。第三，自愿性EID可以提高企业的绿色融资能力，这会增加研发投资并提高绿色全要素生产率。我们的研究证实了企业自愿性EID在提高绿色融资能力以及进一步推动社会可持续发展方面的重要性，此外还为政策制定者和企业管理者提供了关于如何提高企业绿色融资能力的建议。
