企业环境责任表现与政府补贴获取——基于文本分析的经验证据

《财经研究》 2022年48卷第2期 页码：78 - 92  online：2022年2月2日

企业环境责任表现与政府补贴获取——基于文本分析的经验证据

Firms’ Environmental Responsibility Performance and Government Subsidies：Empirical Evidence Based on Text Analysis

作者（中）：李哲1, 2 *, 王文翰3, 王遥4, 5

作者（英）：Li Zhe1, 2 *, Wang Wenhan3, Wang Yao4, 5

作者单位：1.中央财经大学 会计学院，北京 100872 2.中央财经大学 中国管理会计研究中心，北京 100872 3.中央财经大学 金融学院，北京 102206 4.中央财经大学 绿色金融国际研究院，北京 100081 5.中央财经大学 财经研究院，北京 100081

摘要：在我国生态文明建设中，部分企业在履行环境责任时存在“说得多，做得少”的“多言寡行”行为，这种现象与我国“碳达峰、碳中和”的环保目标存在不协调之处。文章研究了企业“多言寡行”的环境责任表现是否会影响政府的资源配置决策。结果表明：（1）环境责任表现“多言寡行”的企业获得了更多的政府补贴。（2）“多言寡行”的环境责任表现帮助企业获得政府补贴的效应只在短期内存在。长期来看，政府可以识破“多言寡行”，消除这种资源获取效应。（3）中央环保督察显著抑制了“多言寡行”与政府补贴的正相关关系。（4）“多言寡行”与政府补贴的正相关关系在污染严重和无政治关联的企业中更加显著。与环保补贴相比，“多言寡行”对非环保补贴的正向影响更加明显。文章的研究结论为我国企业在履行环境责任过程中的行为决策和实践表现提供了新的解读，为我国环境政策的制定提供了新的参考。

关键词：环境责任表现; 政府补贴; 中央环保督察; 文本分析

Summary: In 2020, the Chinese government solemnly promised to the world to achieve the carbon peak by 2030 and the carbon neutrality by 2060. As the core of the modern economy, enterprises play an essential role in promoting the realization of “carbon peak, carbon neutrality” and the construction of ecological civilization. However, some enterprises have a false environmental protection phenomenon of “more words than deeds” in environmental protection practice. This phenomenon constitutes an obstacle to China’s sustainable development strategy. Therefore, it is important to find the internal behavior decision-making and effective governance strategy of corporate environmental responsibility.In China, on the one hand, local governments have discretion in the allocation decision of subsidy resources. On the other hand, local governments are mainly responsible for local ecological and environmental problems. Under the background of strengthening the environmental protection performance appraisal of officials, enterprises are likely to use the environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds” for impression management, improving the evaluation of local governments and obtaining more resources. Therefore, this paper focuses on the impact of enterprises’ environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds” on government subsidies. It provides a new interpretation of the behavior, decision-making and practical performance of Chinese enterprises in the process of fulfilling environmental responsibility, and provides a new reference for the formulation of environmental policies in China.This paper uses the text analysis method to collect data from the relevant reports of listed enterprises and identify the characteristics of “more words than deeds”. It empirically tests the impact of enterprises’ environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds” on government subsidies. The study finds that: (1) Enterprises with “more words than deeds” in environmental responsibility receive more government subsidies. (2) The environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds” helps enterprises obtain government subsidies, which only exists in the short term. (3) The central environmental protection inspector has restrained the positive relationship between “more words and less deeds” and government subsidies. (4) The positive correlation between “more words and less deeds” and government subsidies is more significant in enterprises with more serious pollution and no political connection. And compared with environmental subsidies, “more words than deeds” has a more obvious positive impact on non-environmental subsidies.This paper enriches the existing literature from the following aspects: (1) The existing research has not paid attention to the inconsistency between words and deeds in reality from the disclosure structure of environmental information disclosers. Based on the two dimensions of words and deeds, this paper focuses on the phenomenon of “more words than deeds” in the performance of corporate environmental responsibility, which is a further deepening of the research on corporate microenvironmental behavior. (2) In the background of paying attention to environmental protection in China, enterprises are motivated to adopt the environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds”, that is, adopt low-cost self-packaging to meet the local environmental protection requirements. In this regard, while supporting enterprises to actively disclose environmental information, the government should pay more attention to the assessment and supervision of enterprise environmental governance investment. (3) As a major system innovation, the central environmental protection inspector has achieved positive results in practice. The results of this paper show that the central environmental protection inspector inhibits the resource acquisition effect of “more words than deeds”, which provides a new perspective and empirical support for a comprehensive understanding of the significance and impact of the central environmental protection inspector system.The policy recommendations of this paper are as follows: (1) The environmental responsibility performance of “more words than deeds” belongs to hidden impression management behavior. The government should strengthen the assessment and supervision of enterprise environmental governance investment. (2) Government subsidies can improve the environmental protection enthusiasm of enterprises through resource support. However, from the perspective of sustainability, it is still necessary to guide enterprises to improve their environmental protection awareness, so as to reduce environmental pollution at the root. (3) The central environmental protection inspector has restrained the resource acquisition effect of “more words than deeds” enterprises and played a positive policy effect. In this regard, we should continue to further promote the central environmental protection supervision system and improve the construction of ecological environment governance mechanism. (4) Regulators need to further improve environmental information disclosure rules, focus on the supervision of enterprises with inconsistent words and deeds in the environmental report, and impose corresponding punishment measures according to the situation.

Key words: environmental responsibility performance; government subsidies; central environmental protection inspector; text analysis

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20210812.102

收稿日期：2021-5-30

基金项目：国家自然科学基金青年项目（71902210）；国家社会科学基金重点项目（18AZD013）；中央财经大学科研创新团队支持计划

全文：点击下方“阅读原文”查看全文