Public attention, government subsidies and corporate environmental disclosure: Empirical evidence from listed Chinese enterprises in heavy-pollution industries

Abstract

Environmental pollution, a byproduct of industrialization, is increasingly severe across the globe. The effective control of environmental pollution requires enterprises to make high-quality disclosure of environmental behaviors. This paper collects and processes the annual data of A-share listed enterprises in 16 heavy-pollution industries of China between 2016 and 2018, and empirically explores the relationship between public attention, government subsidies and environmental disclosure. The results show that the number of media reports, as an indicator of public attention, has a significantly positive impact on corporate environmental disclosure. In terms of media preference, positive reports stimulate enterprises to actively disclose environmental behaviors. When the other conditions are the same, the government subsidies received by an enterprise have a significantly positive impact on its environmental disclosure. The growth of government subsidies weakens the promoting effect of media reports on corporate environmental disclosure. The research findings provide new insights into the improvement of corporate environmental disclosure.