Corporate Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure Evidence from Chinas Listed Companies 2Word文档格式.docx

1、6. 4 Empirical Results7. 5 Conclusions8. ReferencesThis article seeks to answer two questions: （i） what factors drive firms to decide whether or not to disclose the information related to their greenhouse gas emissions （also called carbon information）? （ii） what forces lead firms to disclose more ca

2、rbon information? Using data hand-collected from the annual Corporate Social Responsibility reports of Chinas listed companies from 2008 to 2012, we find the following: （i） firms that operate in sectors of high-emission industries are more likely to make carbon information disclosure （CID hereafter）

3、; （ii） the more companies within one industry that make CID, the more likely it is that a company in that industry will make CID; （iii） companies having a higher sales rank within an industry are more likely to make CID. 1 IntroductionClimate change is becoming one of the most important issues of th

4、e twenty-first century, and firms are now playing a crucial role in driving the global transition from a high to a low carbon economy. Carbon information disclosures （CID hereafter）, through which companies respond to climate change by providing standard information about their greenhouse gases emis

5、sions, is attracting increasing attention from scholars, stakeholders and regulators （e.g. Stanny, 2010; Matsumura et al., 2011）.1 This is because through CID, the stakeholders, including government and the public, can better monitor and regulate firms carbon emissions, thus contributing to improve

6、corporate environment performance. As a consequence, corporate CIDs have been steadily increasing in both size and complexity in the past decade.The research on CID has begun to emerge in recent years. Different from the environmental information disclosure （EID, hereafter）, CID is mandated by the I

7、SO14064-1 and thus could offer more formal and standardised information as well as more quantitative measures of the level of corporate carbon emission disclosure than the EID.2 Scholars have examined the determinants （e.g. Stanny and Ely, 1997; Prado-Lorenzo et al., 2009; Kim and Lyon, 2010） and ef

8、fects （e.g. Andrew and Cortese, 2011; Matsumura et al., 2011; Haigh and Shapiro, 2012） of corporate CID. For example, Stanny and Ely （1997） show that factors, such as firm size, institutional ownership and foreign sales are related to the disclosure behaviour of US SP500 firms; to examine the effect

9、 of the Kyoto Protocol on corporate CID, Freedman and Jaggi （2011） investigate greenhouse gas reporting in Europe, Japan, Canada, India, and the US and find that except for Indian companies, companies locating in a country that ratified the protocol tend to report more. Matsumura et al. （2011） exami

10、ne the choice of voluntary disclosure of SP500 firms and the effect of carbon emissions on firm value, documenting that firm value decreases with the disclosed carbon-emission levels.Existing research on CID generally focus on the empirical test of firms in developed countries （Kolk et al., 2008; Ha

11、que and Deegan, 2010; Freedman and Jaggi, 2011）. The corporate CIDs in developing countries have been little addressed in the literature. However, unlike developed countries, most developing countries, though vulnerable to the adverse impact of climate change, may respond differently to the problem

12、as they have to take the domestic responsibilities to meet the human-development needs of hundreds of millions of its people that are still living in poverty. In addition, carbon emission problems may be more serious in developing countries due to their generally stronger rate of economic growth and

13、 continued use of fossil fuels （e.g., Roberts and Grimes, 1997）. Therefore, it is not only interesting, but also necessary to examine the economic drive and consequence associated with corporate CIDs in the developing economy. In this paper, we attempt to make some efforts along these dimensions.Spe

14、cifically, we investigate what would motivate Chinese firms to voluntarily release carbon emission information and what may influence the quality of their CIDs. The highlights of Chinese firms are based on the fact that China has topped the list of CO2 emitting countries since 2006, contributing alm

15、ost one-fourth of the global CO2 emission （EPA）.3 As the second large economic system, China has the largest population and a fast speed of development but still relies on coal as its primary energy source; the notable influence of China in reducing carbon emissions could be evidenced by the importa

16、nt role that China plays in the current climate change negotiations among different countries.Unlike studies of developed countries, a major problem in studying corporate CIDs in China is related to the availability of qualified data. Many companies in developed countries disclose their carbon emiss

17、ions through the Carbon Disclosure Project （CDP）, which is an independent not-for-profit organisation based in the United Kingdom and works with shareholders and corporations to increase their disclosure of the greenhouse gas emissions by inviting enterprises all over the world to release informatio

18、n about their greenhouse gas emissions. However, among all the companies that are invited by CDP to disclose their carbon emissions together with the related risks and opportunities in 2010, 84 per cent of Europe 300 firms and 82 per cent of US S&P 500 firms responded to CDPs invitation and disclose

19、d CID. In contrast, only 11 per cent of China 100 firms did the same thing （CDP, 2010）, resulting in inadequate research literature on Chinas CID. The paucity of response may lead to the scarcity of research.To measure the degree of corporate CID, we extract the CID-related information from annual C

20、orporate Social Responsibility （CSR hereafter） reports. We identify a firm to commit to CID if its CSR report contains information that is officially involved in the CDPs questionnaire, and we score the collected information pursuant to ISO14064-1. Using a sample of listed non-financial companies in

21、 China from the period 2008 through 2012, we show that Chinese firms that are of high-emission industries and of higher peer pressures are more likely to disclose carbon emission. And the quality of disclosure among these firms is higher than that of their counterparts.Our main contribution to the c

22、orporate CID research consists of examining the determinants of corporate carbon disclosures and the drives of CID quality among Chinese companies. Relying on the new hand-collected data, we evidence that firm size, industry, competition status influence corporate decisions on whether to disclose ca

23、rbon emission information and how much to disclose. This study may benefit investors as well as regulators by providing insight to the voluntary CID in transitory economies and is valuable for the world-wide effort on controlling the carbon emission as Chinese companies largely shape the effect of g

24、reenhouse gas emission throughout the world （Liu and Diamond, 2005; Bagnai, 2009）. Besides, by providing evidence on what affects corporate response to climate change in China, we facilitate extending the scope of CID literature to developing countries. Our study therefore may be of interest to inve

25、stors, stakeholders and regulators throughout the world, helping them better understand firms environmental practices and reporting behaviours in carbon emission.The article is organised as follows: In Literature Review and Hypotheses Development, we review the literature and develop our hypothesis.

26、 Data and research design are presented in Data and Research Design and empirical findings are reported in Empirical Results, respectively. In Conclusions, we conclude the implications.2 Literature Review and Hypotheses Development2.1 Literature ReviewThere is increasing interest in the literature t

27、o study the corporate responses to calls for environment protection. Issues that relate to how a firms specific features influence its environmental economic behaviours, as well as the associate environment performance and financial implications, are widely discussed （Berthelot et al., 2003; Rothenb

28、erg and Stanley 2004; Kraft et al., 2011）. Among all the related issues, the area of environmental disclosures has gained largely amounted research focus in the past decades （Deegan, 2002）. It is well documented that environment disclosure has become a stakeholder requirement demand （Lee and Hutchis

29、on, 2005; Jose and Lee, 2006）, which force companies to institutionalise environmental concerns through policies, procedures and systems （Russo and Fouts 1997; Jones et al. 1998）: through disclosing environment activities, companies may benefit from legitimating themselves as social responsible firm

30、s （Berthelot et al., 2003; Anbumozhi et al., 2011）. However, despite that several mandatory EID programmes have been implemented to enhance the reliability of EID （Wang et al., 2004; Garcia et al., 2007）, some studies have shown that the information disclosed by firms could be selective of which mos

31、t tends to be positive, biased, and subject to managers discretions （Neu et al., 1998; Berthelot et al., 2003）.Despite some successful EID programmes （Al-Tuwaijri et al., 2004; Garcia et al., 2007; Blackman, 2008）, most literature has suggested that the level as well as the quality of EID is generally lower in developing countries （e.