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| Does the Green-Finance Policy Mitigate Corporate Environmental Misconducts? —A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones |
| DU Xingqiang, XIE Yuhui, ZENG Quan
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Center for Accounting Studies, Xiamen University;
Accounting Department, Xiamen University |
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Abstract In 2017, China established the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones in eight prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guizhou and Xinjiang provinces. Prior studies have explored economic consequences of the policy on the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones (the pilot policy; hereinafter similarly) in the facets of urban ozone pollution, corporate green innovation, corporate production efficiency and pollution emissions. However, the effects of the pilot policies on corporate environmental misconducts have been ignored. Against this unique setting of the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones, this study examines whether the pilot policy affects corporate environmental misconducts and further investigates differences in this effect between polluting and non-polluting industries.
The pilot policy can mitigate environmental misconducts by the conduits of green transformation, abnormal financing constraints and financial institutions' external monitoring. First, the pilot policy encourages and guides the inflow of various resources into technology upgrading projects and green industries, motivates firms to engage in green innovation actively, and promotes transformation and upgrade. Second, the pilot policy increases excess financing constraints induced by pollution, raises the costs of environmental pollution for firms, and inevitably drives them to pay attention to environmental performance. Lastly, the pilot policy strengthens the external supervision of financial institutions on corporate environmental performance by putting forward more supervision and information disclosure requirements for financial institutions in environmental protection, and then inhibits their environmental violations. Based on the above discussions, this study predicts a mitigating effect of the pilot policy on environmental misconducts of firms in the pilot zones.
Employing a sample of all A-share listed firms over 2014-2019 and using a DID (difference-in-difference) design based on a quasi-natural experiment about the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones, this study finds that, for listed firms in pilot zones, the likelihood of environmental misconduct is significantly lower after the implementation of pilot policies than before. This finding suggests that pilot policies curb environmental wrongdoings. Moreover, the mitigating effect of the pilot policy on corporate environmental misconducts is more pronounced for firms in polluting industries than firms in non-polluting industries. Above findings are robust to the sensitivity tests using the degree of corporate environmental irregularity, controlling for sample balance by the propensity score matching approach and addressing omitted variables by the firm-level fixed effect model. The channel tests show that the pilot policy affects corporate environmental misconducts by green transformation, excess financing constraints and environmental monitoring from financial institutions. Subsample tests reveal that the mitigating effect of the pilot policy on environmental misconducts is more prominent for firms with small scale (with low media coverage, and in heavily air pollution areas).
This study has two contributions listed below. First, this study examines the impact of the pilot policy on environmental misconducts from the perspective of incentive and monitoring, extends economic consequences of the pilot policy at the firm level, and analyses influential channels from the perspectives of green transformation, excess financing constraints and environmental monitoring from financial institutions. As such, this study provides important references for exploring the application and implement of the pilot policy. Second, the findings that the effect of the pilot policy on environmental misconducts is more prominent for firms in polluting industries (with small scale, with low media coverage, in heavily air pollution areas), provides crucial references for how the heterogeneity of firms' external environment moderate the impact of the pilot policy on environmental misconducts.
This study has several policy implications as follow: First, regulators should improve the implementation rules on green financial systems, summarize experiences on the pilot policy, and nationally promote green finance policy in proper time. Second, administrative agencies must enhance the monitoring of financial institutions in environmental governance and draw lessons from the implementation of pilot policies Lastly, policy designers need to consider how to integrate market means and tools into policy design, and eventually improve the efficiency of social governance by taking the critical role of market in resource allocation.
This study has the following three limitations. First, this study views the pilot policy as homogeneous, thus, future research can further examine the impacts of the heterogeneity in the pilot policy on environmental governance. Second, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment based on the pilot zones, and future research needs to conduct further analyses after the green financial policy is implemented nationally. Third, due to data limitation, this study does not consider the differences in pilot policy enforcement, and it can be addressed in the future when the relevant data is more complete.
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Received: 28 November 2022
Published: 30 September 2024
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| Cite this article: |
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DU Xingqiang,XIE Yuhui,ZENG Quan. Does the Green-Finance Policy Mitigate Corporate Environmental Misconducts? —A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zones[J]. Journal of Financial Research,
2024, 527(5): 132-149.
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| URL: |
| http://www.jryj.org.cn/EN/ OR http://www.jryj.org.cn/EN/Y2024/V527/I5/132 |
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