The impact of ownership structure and environmental supervision on the environmental accounting information disclosure quality of high-polluting enterprises in China

It is still controversial whether environmental supervision, as a compulsory means of environmental protection, can improve the environmental accounting information disclosure quality (EAIDQ). There is a growing debate on if different ownership structures will lead to differences in the environmental accounting information disclosed by enterprises? Thus, through constructing multiple linear regression analysis, we empirically studied the impact of ownership structure and environment supervision on the EAIDQ from both internal and external aspects. The findings presented that (1) the overall EAIDQ is not significantly affected by ownership concentration, check-and-balance of ownership, and environmental supervision. (2) The monetary environmental accounting information disclosure quality (M-EAIDQ) is lower than the non-monetary environmental accounting information disclosure quality (NM-EAIDQ). The M-EAIDQ of state-owned enterprises is higher than that of non-state-owned enterprises. The correlation between environmental supervision and the M-EAIDQ is significantly negative, and a significant positive correlation between environmental supervision and the NM-EAIDQ. The research results of this paper can supplement the existing literature and provide a basis for the government to establish environmental accounting information disclosure standards.

Automated summary

The study found that the overall environmental accounting information disclosure quality is not significantly affected by ownership concentration, check-and-balance of ownership, and environmental supervision. The monetary environmental accounting information disclosure quality is lower than the non-monetary environmental accounting information disclosure quality, and state-owned enterprises have higher monetary EAIDQ. There is a significantly negative correlation between environmental supervision and monetary EAIDQ, and a significant positive correlation between environmental supervision and non-monetary EAIDQ.