Configurational analysis of environmental information disclosure: Evidence from China's key pollutant-discharge listed companies.

The environmental information disclosure system is regarded as an important environmental management tool for supervising the environmental behavior of listed companies in China. To explore what drives the environmental information disclosure, a configurational analysis targeted at 264 China's key pollutant-discharge listed companies was studied by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA). The results showed that there were three types of paths to drive the environmental information disclosure: "Strict regulation - low resources - weak capability", "Strict regulation - low resources - strong capability" and "Strict regulation - high resources - strong capability", and that strict environmental regulation played a greatly significant role for promoting the environmental information disclosure level. The research provides a theoretical basis for the effectiveness of environmental regulation on environmental information disclosure, and it charts the future direction for environmental management in China.