Environmental Information Disclosure and Auditing of Listed Companies in Heavy Pollution Industries

Abstract

Concentrating on environmental issues in financial statement auditing is the main way for auditors to fulfill their environmental protection responsibilities. By studying the impact of environmental information disclosure on audit fees and audit opinions, we can infer how closely the auditors focus on environmental matters to some extent. In this paper, listed companies with serious pollution in A-share market in China from 2014 to 2019 are selected as research samples to explore the correlation among environmental-related information disclosure, audit fees and audit opinions. Through empirical analysis, it is found that the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in heavily polluted industries is positively correlated with the audit fees, and negatively correlated with the publication of non-standard audit opinions.