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The impact of corporate environmental responsibility on financial performance—based on Chinese listed companies

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Abstract

In recent years, environmental protection issues have come under the spotlight. This paper constructs a corporate environmental responsibility evaluation index and examines the impact of environmental responsibility performance on financial performance in China based on the information of A-share listed companies disclosed in the “Company Annual Report” and “Social Responsibility Report” from 2008 to 2017. The empirical results show that: (1) without considering the quality of environmental information, fulfilling environmental responsibility can significantly improve the corporate financial performance; (2) after incorporating the quality of environmental responsibility performance and classifying corporations into subgroups by region and attribute, the fulfillment of environmental responsibility has a significant positive impact on the corporate financial performance in the sample of eastern region and non-state-holding companies, with a lag effect, while it has a negative impact in the sample of central region. The research above politically suggests that the Chinese government should establish a long-term management mechanism to encourage companies to fulfill their environmental responsibilities, improve the evaluation system of corporate environmental responsibility performance quality, as well as provide matching financial support or other compensation, thereby realize the sound and sustainable development of companies and the society.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Yun Liu

  2. College of Economics and Trade, Henan University of Technology, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Bin Xi

  3. College of Economics, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430000, China

    Gege Wang

Authors
  1. Yun Liu
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  2. Bin Xi
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  3. Gege Wang
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Contributions

Bin Xi constructed an environmental responsibility indicator used in the manuscript; Gege Wang processed the financial data involved in the manuscript; Yun Liu analyzed and explained the empirical results and made relevant suggestions, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yun Liu.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: Nicholas Apergis

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Table 5 Robustness test
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Liu, Y., Xi, B. & Wang, G. The impact of corporate environmental responsibility on financial performance—based on Chinese listed companies. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 7840–7853 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11069-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11069-4

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