“…We control for the natural logarithm of total assets ( SIZE ), leverage ( LEV ), profitability ( ROE ), firms’ operating cash flows ( CFO ) and book-to-market ratios ( BM ), the nature of firm ownership ( SOE ), the shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder ( TOP1 ), the shareholding ratio of the second to tenth largest shareholders ( TOP2_10 ), CEO duality ( DUAL ) and executive compensation ( SALARY ). Then, referring to literature on corporate private disclosure (Verrecchia, 1983; Clinch and Verrecchia, 1997; Giroud and Mueller, 2011; Huang et al , 2017; Rawson, 2022), we take corporate proprietary information costs into account and control for product market competition, which is measured by Herfindahl–Hirschman Index ( HHI ) and four-firm concentration ratio ( CR_4 ). In addition, we also control for regional characteristics to avoid omitted variable bias, including the mean disclosure level of firms within each city ( MEAN_EDI ), the frequency of environmental words in regional government work reports ( ENVATTENTION ), regional PM 2.5 concentration ( PM2.5 ) and the intensity of environmental regulation in each province ( ENVREGULATE ).…”