Environmental protection and sustainable development of enterprises in China: The moderating role of media attention

Abstract

Faced with global environmental problems, such as global warming, enterprises have become important players in environmental protection. By fulfilling their environmental responsibilities, enterprises can create a good external image and gain support from the public and government, thereby increasing the influence of their enterprises. At the same time, the media plays the role of guiding public opinion and supervising the market economy in enterprise development and market economy. Therefore, this study investigates whether the environmental protection measures taken by enterprises have a positive effect on their sustainable development, and how media attention affects the relationship between environmental protection and sustainable development. This study uses the fixed effect regression method to empirically study the data of A share listed companies in China, from 2016 to 2019. The results of the study show that the enterprises’ fulfillment of environmental responsibilities or carbon trading can promote sustainable development. Furthermore, the higher the network or print media attention, the more environmentally responsible behavior and carbon emissions trading can promote sustainable development capabilities of enterprises. This study enriches the understanding of the important role played by environmental protection in driving enterprise sustainability and contributes to the literature by emphasizing the need for media attention about environmental responsibilities and carbon emissions trading.

Does green technology innovation benefit corporate financial performance? Investigating the moderating effect of media coverage

“…Specifically, both print and news media coverage positively moderate the effect of reactive GTI on CFP, which is consistent with Ren et al (2022) and Zhang et al (2022). Interestingly, new media coverage negatively affected the relationship between reactive and proactive GTIs and CFP, as supported by Liang et al (2022) and Wu et al (2022).…”

“…In line with the research methodology employed by Wu et al (2022), we used the Janis-Fadner (J-F) coefficient to gauge the moderating impact of media coverage derived from print and digital media data. Janis and Fadner (1965) introduced the J-F coefficient as a content analysis index.…”

“…Furthermore, academia distinguishes traditional print from new media coverage based on the dissemination channels (Ren et al, 2022; Wu et al, 2022). For instance, Zhang et al (2022) concluded that print and new media profoundly impact corporate behavior, with print media having a slightly stronger impact on corporate environmental governance.…”

Nonlinear Impact of Corporate Financialization on Sustainable Development Ability: Evidence from Listed Companies in China

“…Boscoianu et al [27] argue that innovation is the foundation of sustainable development for most companies. Wu et al [28] found that by bolstering innovation capabilities and shouldering social responsibilities, companies can notably enhance their sustainable development. Li et al [29] pointed out that increasing executive salaries would raise agency costs and diminish the potential for sustainable development within companies.…”

The impacts of sustainable industrial revolution (IR) on the profitability of Hungarian food companies

“…The "livable path" is one in which the ecological footprint, i.e., the environmental burden, is kept low in line with future economic development and environmentally responsible companies tend to be more profitable (Wu et al, 2022). However, traditional economic approaches underestimate the risks from climate change and overestimate the costs of the low-carbon transition, as they do not consider the cumulative gains from path-dependent innovations (Ekins and Zenghelis, 2021).…”