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| Corporate Environmental Responsibility and Bank Credit: Text Analysis of Words and Deeds |
| LI Zhe, WANG Wenhan
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School of Accountancy & China Management Accounting Research Center, Central University of Finance and Economics;
School of Finance,Central University of Finance and Economics |
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Abstract China officially launched its green credit policy in 2007. Green credit requires financial institutions to consider enterprises' environmental responsibility in their credit decisions. China's green credit policy has developed rapidly since its implementation. However, some enterprises obtain capital support by addressing environmental protection in name only, threatening the healthy development of China's green financial system and creating an unfavorable factor in China's environmental protection marketization mechanism. Therefore, this paper focuses on the “more words than deeds” phenomenon in enterprises' environmental protection practices and investigates its influence on banks' credit decisions. The results will help credit institutions to recognize the implementation risks of green credit policy. This paper provides a new decision-making reference for ensuring the healthy development of green credit.
Using text analysis to collect environmental performance data from the reports of listed companies, this paper identifies the characteristics of more words than deeds enterprises and empirically tests the effect of the more words than deeds approach on bank credit. The findings are as follows. (1) The more words than deeds approach helps enterprises obtain more bank loans. (2) Compared with long-term bank loans, the positive effect is more obvious for short-term bank loans. (3) The promulgation of the Guiding Opinions has restrained the positive influence of the more words than deeds approach on bank loans. (4) Further analysis shows that compared with enterprises that do not use the more words than deeds approach, the environmental responsibility performance of enterprises with more words than deeds has a significant positive impact on the credit resources of banks. This positive impact is more obvious in enterprises with no political connections, lower value and a worse market environment.
The potential contributions of this paper are as follows. (1) Under the current green credit policy, this paper deepens understanding of corporate environmental behavior decision-making and practices. (2) This paper enriches research on the factors that influence bank credit decisions and on corporate information manipulation. In addition, this paper provides new support for improving the environmental information disclosure of listed companies in China. (3) The Guiding Opinions is the systematic framework of China's current green financial policy. However, most of the related academic research focuses on policy interpretation, with a lack of empirical support at the data level. This paper provides micro-level empirical evidence of how to improve the implementation of green credit.
The policy implications of this paper are as follows. (1) Financial institutions should recognize that environmental reports may be used by enterprises for impression management. Therefore, when making credit decisions, banks should strengthen the scrutiny of corporate environmental responsibility performance. (2) In practice, implementing the green credit policy is necessary; however, the financing of heavily polluting enterprises should not be blindly restricted. Instead, a balance of punishments and incentives can achieve a win-win balance of environmental protection and economic development. (3) Building a green financial system is a long-term project. Therefore, all departments should continue to cooperate with each other to ensure the appropriate and sustainable implementation of the green credit policy. (4) Regulators should improve the environmental information disclosure system and focus on the supervision of companies whose words and deeds are inconsistent, supplemented by certain punishment measures.
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Received: 28 June 2021
Published: 01 January 2022
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