Do negative environmental media reports increase environmental information disclosures? A comparative analysis based on political connections and market competition

Abstract

Heavily polluting companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen are used as the sample, and the difference in difference method is applied to analyze how different companies make environmental information disclosure (EID) decisions following negative environmental media reports. The results indicate that the media's supervisory effects are limited, and political connections do not significantly change EID decisions. However, in‐depth media reports and high‐frequency reports can selectively improve EID when companies are exposed to strongly competitive markets. Further, high‐level political connections increase enthusiasm for EID in strongly competitive markets. In contrast, weak competitive markets have the opposite effect.

The Relationship between the Political Connections and Green Innovation Development of Chinese Enterprises—Empirical Analysis Based on Panel Data of Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

“…Some scholars believe that the influence mechanism has a mediating effect or moderating effect, for example that the degree of marketization plays a negative moderating role in the mechanism of political connection and green innovation [34,35]. High-frequency negative environmental media reports will increase the pressure of politically connected enterprises and effectively stimulate enterprises in fiercely competitive industries to attach importance to sustainable development [36]. In addition, in the construction industry, enterprises with political connection will show the social responsibility of the enterprise to the public, express their determination to green development and improve the reputation of enterprises [37].…”

Environmental backgrounds of CEOs and corporate environmental management information disclosure: The mediating effects of financing constraints and media attention

“…CEOs who receive negative press coverage can damage the company's reputation (Love et al, 2017), and overconfident CEOs issue more positive company news and receive more positive market reactions (Gong, 2022). Narcissistic CEOs are interested in improving CSR (Chatterjee & Pollock, 2017), and in‐depth media attention and high‐frequency coverage can promote selective improvement in environmental disclosure by heavily polluting firms when they face a competitive market (Chen & Zhang, 2022). Increased media attention can promote green innovation among heavily polluting public companies (Xiang et al, 2020), and media attention is an important mechanism for green innovation to improve the quality of corporate information disclosure (Ho et al, 2023).…”

Discovering thematic change and evolution of political connections research

“…Top managers with political connections are more interested in executing cross-country M&A deals than top managers without political connections [130]. Corporate social responsibility [110,125,150,166], disclosure [13,40,88,129], and investment [13,48,119,[146][147][148]175] are some examples of contributive actions examined in other studies other research in political connections such as good corporate governance [13,62,119], audit [1,85,149,171], enforcement of certain regulations, such as SEC enforcement [47,86] and tax avoidance [19,99,136,142,144]. This shows that there is a lot of research related to corporate political relations.…”