Regulatory distance and corporate environmental performance: From the perspective of rent-seeking distance.

This paper investigates the impact of regulatory distance on corporate environmental performance using data from Chinese A-share listed companies. The results demonstrate that staying away from regulatory agencies significantly improves corporate environmental performance. The potential impact mechanism is that the increase in regulatory distance significantly suppresses rent-seeking activities. The above impacts are particularly pronounced in companies with weak CEO political and financial connections, state-owned enterprises, and firms in regions with low levels of marketization, owing to the fact that these company characteristics influence firms' ability or inclination to participate in rent-seeking. Further evidence indicates that the effect of regulatory distance on environmental performance will be significantly enhanced by strengthening media regulation and anti-corruption efforts.

The side effects of local government debt: Evidence from urban investment bonds and corporate pollution in China.

Local government debt plays a vital role in achieving financial financialization and regional economic growth. However, the environmental side effects of the debt-financed infrastructure development model have received little attention. Using a large panel data of Chinese enterprises from 2007 to 2016, we explored the relationship between local government debt in terms of urban investment bonds and corporate pollution emission. We observe that the increase in local government debt exaggerates the intensity of COD emission, equal to 26% of the average. This pollution-promoting effect remains after a series of robust checks. In heterogeneous analysis, local government debt is more likely to affect enterprises located in coastal areas, from pollution intensive industry, operating in regions with weak fiscal strength and operating in regions with low governance quality. The mechanistic exploration from government environmental governance and financial constraint reveals that the local government debt increases corporate pollution when the local fiscal finance emphasizes economy over environmental governance, which has been alleviated after the central government advocates the construction of an environmentally friendly and resource-saving society; An increase of corporate pollution is also possible when local government debt increases the financing constraints of enterprises. We also unveil the source of corporate pollution, and find that if enterprises do not actively adopt environmental strategies either in terms of "end-of-pipe" or "source prevention", they choose to emit more to face with the onslaught of local debt. This study uncovers the environmental impacts of government debt, and explores the potential mechanisms, which can help reduce pollution from local government debt and achieve global climate governance.

Impact of distance between corporate registration and monitoring stations on environmental performance - Evidence from air quality monitoring stations.

Several countries are adopting vertical environmental regulations (air quality monitoring stations) to control pollution. However, there is a relative lack of research analysing environmental regulations and performance from a geographic distance perspective. This study introduces atmospheric quality monitoring stations as a type of environmental regulation using data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019 to determine the effect of monitoring station distance on corporate environmental performance and the moderating role of corporate strategy. This analysis yielded the following findings. First, based on institutional and signalling theories, we find that monitoring station distance inhibits environmental performance. Second, disclosure, digital transformation, and environmental strategies can reverse the negative effects of monitoring stations. Third, while market drivers improve the ability to monitor station distances, political corruption hinders this. Fourth, firm heterogeneity analysis tells us that the "crowding out" effect of monitoring station distance is more significant for state-owned enterprises, high-tech firms, and heavy polluters. Finally, we found that the monitoring role of stations can be fully utilised only if they are established within a certain distance from the enterprise. These findings are important for establishing air quality monitoring stations and corporate environmental performance in developing countries, including China.

Employees' behavioural action towards corporate environmental performance: The moderating effect of moral reflectiveness.

The evolution of the hotel industry's corporate environmental performance cannot be realized without employees acting in an environmentally friendly manner, such as low carbon behaviour. However, a thorough analysis of the factors influencing employees' low-carbon behaviour and hotels' corporate environmental performance has not yet been done. To overcome this literature gap and envision the social identity theory, this study evaluated how employees' green self-efficacy, environmental awareness, and perceived corporate environmental responsibility facilitate staff low carbon behaviour. Also, the study explored the moderation role of employees' moral reflectiveness. Through a purposive sampling technique, data was collected from 455 employees in the hotel industry in South Africa. The partial least squares structural equation model method examined the proposed hypothesis. The empirical findings revealed that: (1) employees' green self-efficacy, environmental awareness, and perceived corporate environmental responsibility positively influence their low carbon behaviour. (2) Employees' low carbon behaviour directly and positively affected hotels' corporate environmental performance. (3) The outcome supported the moderation effect of employees' moral reflectiveness on the linkage between green self-efficacy and low-carbon behaviour. The practical and theoretical implications are discussed. The limitations and areas of future research are further outlined.

The impact of the energy-consuming right trading system on corporate environmental performance: Based on empirical evidence from panel data of industrial enterprises listed in pilot regions.

The energy-consuming right trading system (ECRTS) is a significant institutional innovation in China to address the increasingly severe energy crisis and environmental issues. Identifying the policy effects of energy consumption rights on corporate environmental performance (CEP) is conducive to achieving a win-win situation for China's economic growth and carbon neutrality. This study aims to analyze the impact of energy-consuming right trading system on corporate environmental performance and provide empirical evidence and policy implications for the full implementation of future policies. Using data from Chinese listed industrial enterprises from 2012 to 2019 and adopting the difference-in-differences method and mediation analysis, we empirically analyze the policy effects of energy-consuming right trading system. We find that the energy-consuming right trading system significantly promotes the improvement of corporate environmental performance, and the conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests. Further mechanism examinations indicate that the system mainly enhances environmental performance by affecting corporate green technological innovation. Heterogeneity tests suggest that the energy-consuming right trading system has a stronger impact on companies in economically developed regions, non-state-owned enterprises, and those with higher asset flexibility. Our research results can aid in the green transformation of enterprises and provide practical evidence for China to accelerate the comprehensive construction of the energy consumption rights trading market.

Firms, activist attacks, and the forward-looking management of reputational risks.

A growing literature investigates how activists launch attacks against firms to improve environmental practices, a situation typically referred to as "private politics." Whether firms self-regulate in response has been shown to depend on reputational risks. However, reputation management in this literature is mostly reactive, whereas firms could be expected to anticipate and prevent reputation loss when faced with the threat of activism. How they would do so is not obvious, nonetheless, because firms have to consider two opposite effects: (1) a "reputational damage mitigation" effect, through which firms can pre-emptively align to what is expected from them, and (2) a "target enhancing" effect, in which self-regulation makes firms more visible and likely to be criticized. We show, theoretically and empirically, that these two effects actually co-exist and create heterogeneity in firms' responses when they witness activist attacks in their industry. The real impact of activism on the development of more sustainable practices is thus not only greater than if we solely considered the responses of firms that suffer direct attacks, as many firms start self-regulating before being targeted, but also varies within industries.

Facilitate or Inhibit: Corporate Environmental Performance and Financing Costs.

The proposed carbon peak and carbon neutralization goals have ushered China into an era of emissions reduction and a climate-oriented economy. With the proposed double carbon goal, China has formulated many environmental protection and green credit policies. This paper aims to assess the impact of corporate environmental performance (CEP) on financing costs, using a panel dataset of companies in China's heavily polluting industries from 2010 to 2019. We employed fixed-effect models, moderating-effect models, and panel quantile regression (PQR) to analyze the impact, underlying mechanisms, and asymmetric features of CEP on financing costs. Our results indicate that CEP has an inhibitory effect on financing costs, with political connections strengthening this effect and GEA weakening it. Moreover, the impact exhibits asymmetry at different levels of financing costs, wherein lower financing costs see a greater weakening effect from CEP. Improved CEP helps to optimize the financing performance of companies and reduce financing costs. Therefore, policy makers and regulatory authorities should work to unblock financing channels for companies, encourage environmental investment, and remain flexible in implementing environmental policies.

How to motivate employees towards organizational energy conservation: Insights based on employees perceptions and an IoT-enabled gamified IS intervention.

Employees can help organizations attain Corporate Environmental Performance (CEP) goals and save on energy bills, by conserving electricity. However, they lack the motivation. Information Systems (IS)-enabled energy-related feedback interventions featuring gamification (utilizing game-design elements), have been suggested to increase organizational energy conservation. To identify the behavioral factors that should be considered when designing such interventions towards optimizing their results, this paper focuses on unravelling the intricacies of employee energy consumption behavior and providing answers to the research question: "What drives employees to save energy at work?". Our research is conducted in three workplaces across Europe. First, we analyze employees' energy-saving motivation and behavior at an individual level of analysis to identify defining behavioral factors behind it. Then, considering these drivers of employees' energy consumption behavior, we focus on answering the question: "How a gamified IS that provides real-time energy usage feedback affects employees' motivation to conserve energy at work, and in turn the actual energy savings in organizations". Our findings suggest that employees' level of self-determination to conserve energy, energy-saving personal norms, and personal and organizational profile, significantly explain both their energy-saving behavior and the energy behavior change attained through a gamified IS intervention. Moreover, the provision of feedback to employees, via an Internet-Of-Things (IoT)-enabled gamified IS, is proven an effective strategy for accomplishing actual energy conservation at work. The acquired insight on what drives employees' energy usage behavior supports the design of gamified IS interventions that have higher motivational capacity and, thus, can change employees' energy behavior. When designing behavioral interventions aimed at energy conservation at work, we should primarily focus on monitoring (to decide whether a behavioral intervention would be worth organizing) and ultimately positively affecting employees' energy-saving habits and intention. Our findings can be transformed to specific practical suggestions for firms to encourage employees' energy saving behavior when aspiring to attain CEP goals. They include satisfying their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, activating their personal norms in the context of energy-saving at work, and educating and encouraging them towards specific energy-saving behaviors by utilizing gamified IoT-enabled IS that keep their energy-saving "in shape".

Does the "Tian-Ren-He-Yi" Belief System Promote Corporate Environmental Performance?

Buddhism and Taoism are among two of the major religions in China. Their "Tian-ren-he-yi" belief system promotes a conception of harmony between man and nature, which is an important guide for the construction of ecological civilization in China. Using data from Chinese listed manufacturing companies, this paper explores the impact and mechanism of Chinese local religious beliefs on corporate environmental governance. The results indicate that this belief system can improve corporate environmental performance. Furthermore, mechanism tests show that the "Tian-ren-he-yi" belief system promotes corporate environmental practices by reducing the pressure on management to achieve economic performance goals and increasing investment in environmental protection. Finally, the impact of the belief system on corporate environmental performance is more efficacious when the enterprises are under weak external supervision. Our results imply that the traditional religious culture is an important factor that influences corporate environmental performance in Chinese business practices.

A Systematic Review of Barriers in Adoption of Environmental Management Accounting in Chinese SMEs for Sustainable Performance.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in sustainable development not only for their significant contribution to China's economy but also for their large share of total discharged pollutants. Despite the widely acknowledged importance and benefits of environmental management accounting (EMA), the level of adoption and implementation of EMA practice is still weak within SMEs in many countries, especially in China. The current systematic review aims to identify the barriers affecting the Chinese SMEs for adopting EMA practices along with the critical success factors required for adopting EMA practices by SMEs and their top management for ensuring sustainable corporate environmental performance in China. The study is carried out following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. In total, 73 articles were found to be eligible to be included in the systematic review, which was published on EMA in small- and medium-sized enterprises in China. Our study aims to document barriers to the adoption of EMA among Chinese SMEs. The review concluded that strict legislation and the availability of flexible financing options for SMEs can promote the adoption of EMA by SMEs. The establishment of environmental reporting systems and auditing mechanisms can further increase the utilization of EMA by small and medium firms. Barriers to EMA adoption can be mitigated after careful consideration of the current situation in SMEs. Documentation of significant barriers may help to form supportive policies which ultimately add to the efforts toward climate change mitigation.

Corporate Environmental Performance in China: The Moderating Effects of the Media versus the Approach of Local Governments.

This article selects the listed companies in China's A-share heavy pollution industry from 2014 to 2018 as samples, uses a random effect model to empirically test the relationship between media attention and corporate environmental performance and examines the impacts of local government environmental protection and property nature on that relationship. Results are as follow: (1) Media attention can significantly affect a company's environmental performance. The higher the media attention, the greater the company's supervision and the better its environmental performance. (2) In areas where the government pays less attention to environmental protection, the impact of media on corporate environmental performance is more obvious, but in other areas, the impact of media on environmental performance cannot be reflected; (3) The media attention is very significant for the environmental performance improvement of state-owned enterprises, and it is not obvious in non-state-owned enterprises. (4) A further breakdown of the study found that the role of media attention in corporate environmental performance is only significant in the sample of local governments that have low environmental protection and are state-owned enterprises. This research incorporates the local government's emphasis on environmental protection into the research field of vision, expands the research scope of media and corporate environmental performance, and also provides new clues and evidence for promoting the active fulfillment of environmental protection responsibilities by companies and local governments.

Elucidating the effectiveness of cognitive CEO on corporate environmental performance: the mediating role of corporate innovation.

This study contemplates the effectiveness of the cognitive CEO on corporate environmental performance for the 1058 listed Chinese firms on Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges for the years 2015-2019. The contributive concept of the cognitive CEO has been demonstrated through CEO tenure, education, goodwill, and attainment of tacit knowledge while implementing the DAE statistical technique. Additionally, the corporate environmental performance has been formulated, signifying the eight environmental attributes. Convincingly, innovation is intertwined with corporate environmental responsibility, which has been analyzed as a mediator. Remarkably, our findings envisage the cognitive CEO as a promoter of corporate environmental responsibility. Meanwhile, under the patronage of the cognitive CEO, innovation output has been ascertained as a vigorous intensifier of corporate environmental performance as compared with innovation input. Moreover, firms exhibiting specific characteristics like firm age, presence of independent directors, and being a state-owned enterprise proclaim their orientation towards corporate environmental responsibility. Specifically, under the patronage of stakeholder theory, empirical results have been interpreted. Significantly, the integrity of empirical results has been authenticated via the execution of GMM instrumental regression. Lastly, the implication of the study recommends the mangers, academicians, and organizational theorists to perceive the significance of cognitive CEO who can manage the funds for both innovation and corporate environmental responsibility.