Jie Kang. Keywords correlation, enterprises competitiveness,exposure of environment information

Transcription

1 Correlation between Exposure of Environment Information and Enterprises Competitiveness Empirical Analysis based on Listed Firms of Jiangsu in Shanghai Stock Exchange Jie Kang Abstract With the advancement of stakeholders awareness of environment, listed companies has faced the growing pressure of disclosing environment information. This paper has studied the relationship between disclosure of environment information and enterprises competitiveness by analyzing data of Jiangsu s listed companies in Shanghai. To measure the former, this paper adopts commonly-used data. And the latter is attained by establishing corresponding scoring system. This dissertation uses the SPSS19 to do the empirical analysis, drawing the conclusion that these two factors are positively related. This conclusion is helpful for listed companies to enhance the exposure to strengthen their competitiveness and for investors to judge companies value and so on. Keywords correlation, enterprises competitiveness,exposure of environment information W I. INTRODUCTION ITH the putting forward and putting into operation of the concept of low-carbon, more and more people are paying attentions to the effects on the environment caused by enterprises manufacturing activities. As the tool and carrier for enterprises to reveal their own environment information, the exposure of environment information has caused the attention of relevant government departments and the public. As each industry s leaders, listed companies should show leadership both in voluntarily disclosing the environment information and in consciously performing the social responsibility of enterprises. In recent years, to promote the disclosure of environment information, China's government has issued many related policies. In September 21, in order to guide the listed company to perform the social responsibility of protecting the environment actively, in order to improve the listed companies environmental protection work, in order to regulate listed companies environmental information disclosure, the State Department of Environmental Protection defined the content of environment information. Under the government's guidance, environmental information disclosure of the listed companies in China has been improved, but its quality is to be further ascent. From the relevant literatures and material to see, most scholars at home and abroad separately studied and discussed the two themes of environmental information disclosure and enterprises competition, very lack of direct normative research or empirical analysis on the correlation between them. Among all the materials, studies on environmental information disclosure concentrate on the present situation of environment information disclosure and the reasons and influences; as far as the competitiveness, in addition to the reasons for the existence of the competitive power, most researches are limited to the selection of the evaluation index of company competitiveness. However, environment information disclosure and company competition ability is mutual interdependence and mutual unified, for the ultimate objective of discussion and research on both themes is to make the enterprise orderly and effectively grow and realize the maximization of enterprise value. Thus it is necessary to study the relationship between the two. This paper hope to use the domestic and foreign scholars' research methods, study on whether the company competition ability would affect the quality of the environment information disclosure and whether the quality of the environment information disclosure can improve the competition. This article does an empirical research on the relationship between the two factors to validate the assumption. This paper s research significance lies in the following aspects: to know the environment information disclosure of the listed companies in China and its correlation with the competitive power of enterprise, to deepen and expand the theoretical research of enterprises environmental information disclosure, to enhance the enterprises consciousness of protecting environment, saving energy and low-carbon, to ease the conflicts between the target of enterprises development and economic growth and the goal of protecting environment, and to enhance China's listed companies comprehensive competitiveness in the domestic and overseas markets. In the long run, it will be beneficial to the sustainable development of the economy in our country. 134

2 II. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Literature Review of Exposure of Environment Information Companies disclosure of environmental information is the final work of environment accounting and the most important part of environment accounting system. Listed companies disclose their environmental information to reveal the use of resources and environment pollution. In a word, it is the inevitable request of managing the currently severe environmental situation and building environment friendly society. Listed companies have necessity to disclose their environment information. From the macroscopic angle, environmental information disclosure is the need of national macro management. Relevant government departments can understand the whole social environment condition indirectly through the summary analysis of each listed company s environment information and then take corresponding measures. From the micro perspective, the environment information disclosure is the need of listed companies internal management and development and the need of stakeholders to make a decision. According to the disclosure of environment information, listed companies may know the impact on environment caused by their business activities, make the accounting result more scientific and then enhance their own image and realize the optimal combination between economic benefits and environmental benefits. As the final carrier of listed companies environmental behaviors and impact, environmental information has varied forms, both qualitative and quantitative, both monetary and non-monetary, such as physical and technical index. At present, there are mainly three ways to disclose the environment information: one is financial report, one is separate disclosure, and another is environment report. This paper mainly studies the two ways of annual report and social responsibility report. Throughout the domestic and foreign researches, most concentrate on descriptive analysis, influence factors and disclosure consequences. Reference[1] found that from 1987 to 1992, the disclosure of environmental information have significantly increased. [2]-[4]in turn think the environment information disclosure has something with enterprise s feature, environmental performance, environmental regulations come on stage, environmental accidents and media reports. [5] shows that the market will react negatively a few days after the environment information disclosure through the study. All the descriptive analysis of [6]-[8] think that at present the environment information disclosure of listed companies in China has the following characteristics: disclosure proportion is not high, disclosures gradually increase and most of the content is qualitative description. In recent years, existing domestic research such as [9]-[11] found that the company characteristics, corporate governance, external factors has great influence on the environment information disclosure. [12] confirmed that at this period of our country, environmental information disclosure still cannot affect the price of the stock and the decision-making behavior of investors. From the above analysis, we can conclude that researches on environment information disclosure mainly have the following problems: existing empirical studies most stay on the descriptive analysis, and just a few studies involve the influence factors and the effects. B. Literature Review of Enterprises Competitiveness The enterprises competitiveness is the comprehensive ability of companies to shape their ability, obtain external resources, realize their own economic benefit goal and create value for customers in the competitive market conditions. The competition can be divided into three levels: product layer, system layer and core layer. Therefore, the company's concept of environmental protection plays an important role in improving their competitiveness. At present, the evaluation methods of companies competitiveness are mainly divided into the single index evaluation method and the comprehensive index evaluation method. Single index evaluation method refers to comparing one current index with the base one. Its characteristic is simple and intuitive, but is not good for responding the comprehensive competitiveness of the company. Comprehensive index evaluation method refers to forming a comprehensive index. This paper uses the latter index evaluation method. Researches on enterprises competitiveness are mainly divided into theory research and evaluation research. Throughout the foreign studies, the product's market share is a classical evaluation index of company competitiveness. With the deepening of the research, scholars have realized only using market share index is difficult to fully and truly reflect the competitive power of enterprise, so they began to evaluate the comprehensive competitiveness of enterprise indirectly through company's financial situation analysis, such as British systematic evaluation and Japan s evaluation of enterprise vitality in [13]-[14]. From the domestic research to see, [15]- [18] put forward an evaluation method of enterprises competitiveness, which is the most representative and practical one in our country. This evaluation method including evaluation index and analysis index, the former reflecting the eventual performance of competitiveness and the latter reflecting the source of the competition and the deciding factors. From the above analysis, we can conclude that company s competition ability is a systematic indicator of enterprises performance. Besides, as part of company s daily management and an integral part of enterprises ideas and values, the environment information disclosure has a certain effect on shaping and sustaining the competitiveness of companies. Therefore, it is necessary to make a correlation research between environmental information disclosure and companies competitiveness. 135

3 III. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS AND ASSUMPTION PROPOSED Reference [19] found that enterprises performance and environmental information disclosure level were positively correlated by empirical study. [2] used empirical study and found that forced disclosure of the environment information in the energy industry has obvious effect, not only improving the environmental benefits but also improving the efficiency of using energy and resources. From the perspective of agent responsibility theory, responsibilities of the enterprise can be summarized as economic responsibility and social responsibility. The former refers to seeking interests for the shareholders while the latter refers to seeking interests for others and natural environment. So for environmental problems and influence caused by daily operation activities, enterprises have the responsibility and obligation to disclose environmental information to all the stakeholders, so as to improve their economic benefit, optimize the allocation of resources and improve the competitiveness of enterprises. Thus, this article puts forward the following assumption: Assumption 1: companies of higher-quality environmental information disclosure have higher competitiveness than others. According to agency theory, when the company s operating performance is good, agents have motivation to disclose more information. Instead, when the company has poor performance, agents tend to hide relevant circumstances and don t disclose relevant information. As [21] found that companies with large scale and good profitability will disclose more environmental information. Thus, this article puts forward the following assumption: Assumption 2: companies with higher competitiveness will disclose more environment information. IV. STUDY DESIGN A. Selection of Samples and Sources of Data This paper studies the sample of 75 listed companies of Jiangsu province in Shanghai Stock Exchange. By sorting the samples we found that 3 companies disclose environment information only in the annual report or separate report, 11 companies disclose the information in both two reports, and the residual 34 ones don t release any environment information. Due to that the EEI of companies which don t disclose environmental information can t be calculated, we eliminate the 11 ones. Besides, 2 companies lack the corresponding EC data([22]). Ultimately, we determine 39 research samples. B. Definition of Variables TABLE I DEFINITION OF VARIABLES Symbol Name Definition of variables dependent variable and explained variable EC Enterprises Take monitoring standard values of EEI Competitiveness Exposure of Environment Information basic competitive Calculate through the score sheet of company environmental information disclosure project control variables Industry Industry Virtual variable, heavy-pollution industry take 1, otherwise take Size Size natural logarithm of the final total assets SoSP State-owned Shares Proportion Aggregate according to the relevant information, including state-owned and state legal person share C. Model Building To test the hypotheses proposed, this paper establishes the following models: EC 1EEI 2Industry 3Size 4SoSP (1) EEI 1EC 2Industry 3Size 4SoSP (2) (1) takes EC as the dependent variable and EEI as explained variable; (2) takes EEI as the dependent variable and EC as explained variable V. EMPIRICAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS Sort the variables numerical of 39 sample companies and get TABLE II. TABLE II VALUE OF VARIABLES OF SAMPLE COMPANY EEI EC Industry Size SoSP(%)

4 A. Descriptive Statistics By Using the SPSS19 to do descriptive statistics of the variables, we can see that in 211 the average of competitiveness of listed companies of Jiangsu province in SSE is , that the average of environment information disclosure quality is 7.577, that the average of company scale is and that the average of the proportion of state (%) is TABLE III DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS range minimal value maximal value mean value standard deviation variance EC EEI Industry Size SoSP N B. Related Coefficient between Variables To get the correlation between variables, this article has conducted the Spearman related test and drawn the conclusion that EC and EEI are positively associated. TABLE IV SPEARMAN RELATED COEFFICIENT TEST SpEC ea r m an s EEI rh o EC EEI Industry Size SoSP related 1. Sig.. N 39 related.391 * 1. Sig..14. N Industry related Sig N Size related * 1. Sig N SoSP related Sig N C. Multiple Regression Analysis Firstly, take EC as the dependent variable, EEI as explained variable and the rest of the variable as the control variables. Stepwise regression analysis to (1) by using SPSS19, the operation results are as TABLE V. TABLE V QUOTIENT OF (1) Unstandardized s standardized s model B Standard error trial version t Sig. 1 constant EEI From the SPSS19 s analysis, it is known that the result of (1) is EC = EEI Secondly, take EEI as the dependent variable, EC as explained variable and the rest of the variable as the control variables. Stepwise regression analysis to (2) by using SPSS19, the operation results are as TABLE VI. TABLE VI QUOTIENT OF (2) Unstandardized s standardized s model B Standard error trial version t Sig. 1 constant EEI From the SPSS19 s analysis, it is known that the result of (2) is EEI = EC Thirdly, calculate the Spearman rank correlation of competitiveness and environment information disclosure and show the result in TABLE VII. TABLE VII RESULT OF CORRELATION ANALYSIS control variables EC EEI E correlation Industry C Size significance..5 SoSP df 34 E correlation EI significance.5. df is between.4 and.6, so EEI and EC are medium related. (Spearman rank correlation is weakly positive related when between.2 and.4, medium related when between.4 and.6, strongly related when between.6 and.8) VI. RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS A. Research Conclusions This paper unifies companies environment information disclosure and competition ability, choosing the data of 75 listed companies of Jiangsu province in Shanghai Stock Exchange, use the SPSS19 software to do the correlation analysis and draw the conclusion that these two factors are positively related. Because nowadays environment problems draw increasing attention and the public's awareness of environmental protection strengthens gradually, environment information disclosure is of urgent requirement. This paper s research conclusion also proves that the quality of environmental information disclosure is one factor that affects enterprises competitiveness. B. Policy Suggestions Based on the above analysis, this paper puts forward the following suggestions. 137

5 Firstly, the relevant government departments should speed up the unity of the content and format of listed companies environment information disclosure, in order to compare different listed companies quality and facilitate the research on the environment information disclosure at the same time. Secondly, regulators should strengthen the guidance of the environment information disclosure of listed companies and the implementation of effective supervision. In addition, regulators should set up accountability mechanism to implement and execute. At last, as each industry s leader, listed companies should be careful to perform the responsibility of disclosing the environment information, improve the quality of disclosure to shape and maintain their own competitiveness. Only in this way can they survive in the market of fierce competition. BIOGRAPHY OF AUTHOR Jie Kang was born in Anhui Province of China in Sept.17,1991.He graduated from Accounting School of Nanjing University of Finance and Economics after four-year majoring in Accounting and obtained the Bachelor s Degree in Management in 212. Now he is studying for a Master s Degree at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai, majoring in International Trade. His current research focuses on Supply Chain Finance. He interned at a large state-owned enterprise as Trainee of Financial Management in his senior year and did a part-time job as Financial Assistant during the summer of 212. REFERENCES [1] Niskala M. Environmental reporting in Finland [J].Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1995, 2 (6): [2] Rockness J. An assessment of the relationship between U.S. corporate environmental performance and disclosure [J].Journal of Business Finance and Accounting,1985,12(3): [3] Barth M. Factors influencing firm s disclosures about environmental liabilities [J].Review of Accounting Studies, 1997, 2 (1): [4] Patten D M. Intra-industry environmental disclosures in response to the Alaskan oil spill: a note on legitimacy theory [J]. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1992, 17(5): [5] Hasseldine J. Quantity versus quality: the impact of environmental disclosure on the reputations of UK plcs [J].The British Accounting Review, 25,37(2): [6] Ji Shan.Analysis of Environmental Information Disclosure of Listed Companies in Petrochemical Industry[J].Economist,25,(5): [7] Zhou Jie. Analysis of Environmental Information Disclosure of Shanghai Listed Companies[J].Ecological Economy,27,(6): [8] Li Qingyang.Current Situation and Measures of Environmental Information Disclosure in Iron and Steel Corporations[J].Business Accounting,21,(7):7-71. [9] Tang Yali.Empirical Research on Status and Factors of Environmental Information Disclosure in China s Listed Companies[J].Management World,26,(1): [1] Li Zheng. Empirical Research on Factors Affecting Environmental Information Disclosure[J].Zone Economic,26,(8): [11] Xiao Hua. Public Pressure and Environmental Information Disclosure[J].Accounting Research,28,(5): [12] Shen Hongtao.Enterprises Environmental Information Disclosure[M].Beijing:Science Press,211. [13] Peng Lihong. Enterprise Competitiveness[M[.Beijing:Economic Science Press,2. [14] Li Weidong. Evaluation Theory and Method Research of Enterprise Competitiveness[M].Beijing: Chinese Market Press,29. [15] Jin Bei. Theory and Method of Evaluating Enterprise Competitiveness [J].China's Industrial Economy,23,(3):5-13. [16] Qian Zhongping, Comprehensive Index System of Evaluation on Enterprise Competitiveness[J].Journal of East China Shipbuilding Institute,1998,(12): [17] Huang Xianhai.Measure and Analysis of Chinese Manufacturing Industry Trade Competitiveness[J]. International Trade,26,(5). [18] Huang Zuhui. The Testing Methods of Competitiveness of Industries[J].Journal of Zhejiang University,22,(4). [19] Anderson. Voluntary Social Reporting [J]. Accounting Review, 198, 55: [2] Yang Qingxiang. Influence of Equity Structure on the Investment Behavior Under Different Properties[J].China's Soft Science,21,(7): [21] Marlene Plumlee. The Impact of Voluntary Environmental Disclosure Quality on Firm Value[J]. Academy of Management Proceedings, 29. [22] Jin Bei. Report of China s Enterprises Competitiveness (211)[M].Beijing:Social Sciences Academic Press,