۱- Introduction

۲- Literature review

۳- Research design and hypothesis

۴- Sample and statistical description

۵- Empirical analysis results

۶- Conclusion

References

Abstract

Purpose – Based on several important environmental protection and information disclosure policies that have been issued in China, the purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between characteristics and the environmental information disclosure quality of sample companies.
Design/methodology/approach – The OLS regression analysis is selected for this research which takes China’s heavy pollution companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2015 to 2016 as samples.
Findings – The quality of these environmental information disclosures needs to be strengthened, and while the quality of the disclosures among the companies examined improved significantly in 2016 compared with 2015, there are still high variations in quality from industry to industry. In addition, the scale of company is most closely correlated to the quality of environmental information disclosure and the economic situation of the enterprises is the next. Other factors affecting the disclosure quality include in order the degree of local economic development the scale of the state-owned shares and the independent directors. Listed years and equity restriction show a positive correlation but not significant in statistics.
Originality/value – The research will assist administrative organizations to allocate governance sources effectively, plan governance investment as a whole, and improve the overall level of the disclosure of environmental information while strengthening the governance efficiency and effectiveness, according to the correlation and degree between the company characteristics and environmental information disclosure quality.

Introduction

After more than 30 years of rapid economic growth stemming from reformation policies – including the “open door policy” – the standard of living in China has greatly improved. However, the extensive means of development in the long term has also made the deterioration of the quality of China’s environment increasingly serious (Wang and Sun, 2018). Over the last few years, air pollution, revealed by frequent haze in most of central and eastern China, has caused widespread respiratory diseases (Cao and Wang, 2017). On April 24, 2014, the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, signed the 9th Presidential Decree and passed the emendatory “Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China.” The act notably calls for more transparency by these pollutant discharging units, exposing conditions of pollution control facilities to society, and thereby accepting social supervision that would ensure. Then, the Report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party introduced a developmental goal aiming “to accelerate the systematic reform of ecological civilization and build a beautiful China.” In effect, this points out that China should focus on serious environmental issues by trying to build and perfect mandatory disclosure of information systems. In fact, supervisory organizations in China had formulated and implemented some specific regulations in the field of environmental information disclosure long before the issue of the new Environmental Protection Act.