The impact of environmental information disclosure on the firm value of listed manufacturing firms: Evidence from China

Abstract

In the last decade, the public concern over environmental problems has led to the emergence of environmental regulations in firms’ information disclosure on environmental practice, especially in some developing countries such as China. Based on a panel dataset composed of the listed manufacturing firms in China during 2006–2016, this paper uses the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the propensity score matching (PSM) method to investigate whether the Environmental Information Disclosure Measure (for Trial Implementation; EIDMT) affects the firm value. The results show that EIDMT exerts a significant impact on the listed manufacturing firms’ value. In consideration of the firm’s ownership, EIDMT plays a more important role in the firm value of non-state-owned firms than state-owned firms. Furthermore, using a PSM–DID model for eastern, central, and western China, we find that EIDMT significantly affects the firm value in eastern and western China but has little impact on central China.