Environmental Legitimacy, Green Innovation, and Corporate Carbon Disclosure: Evidence from CDP China 100

Firms worldwide are increasingly required to disclose (and make efforts to reduce) their carbon emissions due to the environmental damage associated with climate change. Because there has been no previous literature focusing on the determinants of corporate carbon disclosure integrating environmenta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics
Authors: Li, Dayuan (Author) ; Huang, Min (Author) ; Ren, Shenggang (Author) ; Chen, Xiaohong (Author) ; Ning, Lutao (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2018
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2018, Volume: 150, Issue: 4, Pages: 1089-1104
Further subjects:B China
B Carbon Disclosure Project
B Emerging economies
B Corporate carbon disclosure
B green product innovation
B Environmental legitimacy
B Green process innovation
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:Firms worldwide are increasingly required to disclose (and make efforts to reduce) their carbon emissions due to the environmental damage associated with climate change. Because there has been no previous literature focusing on the determinants of corporate carbon disclosure integrating environmental legitimacy and green innovation, the present study attempted to develop an original framework to fill the research gap. This study explored the influence of environmental legitimacy (an external informal mechanism) on corporate carbon disclosure, and investigated the role of green innovation (an internal formal mechanism) as a mediator. With the samples of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in China from 2008 to 2012, the results demonstrate that environmental legitimacy significantly negatively influences the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, and that green process innovation mediates the relationship, while green product innovation has no significant mediating effect. It means that environmental legitimacy not only directly affects the likelihood of corporate carbon disclosure, but also indirectly affects it via green process innovation. Hence, companies must increase both informal and formal mechanisms, i.e., external environmental legitimacy and internal green process innovation, to engage in carbon information disclosure and ensure sustainability.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3187-6