Contemporary Finance & Economics ›› 2025, Vol. 0 ›› Issue (1): 83-96.

• Business Administration • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Environmental Information Disclosure and Site Selection of Polluting Enterprises

Xu Jing-lin1, Yang Xin-yao2, Tan Wei-jie3, Xiang Wei-min4   

  1. 1. Tsinghua University, Beijing 100083;
    2. Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031;
    3. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China;
    4. Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing 400067, China
  • Received:2024-06-04 Revised:2024-12-17 Online:2025-01-15 Published:2025-02-12

Abstract: The site selection strategy of polluting enterprises under environmental regulations has always been an important issue of concern to all sectors of society. Taking China’s environmental information disclosure policy as a quasi natural experiment, and based on the data from 270 newly added polluting enterprises at prefecture level cities from 2003 to 2013, this paper empirically examines the impact of environmental information disclosure policy on the site selection of polluting enterprises with the difference in differences method. The research results indicate that the policy of environmental information disclosure has suppressed the entry of polluting enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis results show that the inhibitory effect of environmental information disclosure policies on the entry of polluting enterprises is more significant in state-owned, private, and other polluting enterprises, as well as in the eastern region. The dual verification of the macro and micro data shows that the policy of environmental information disclosure mainly affects the site selection of polluting enterprises by leveraging the driving effect of green transformation and the pollution shelter effect. On the one hand, the policies reduce the public’s tolerance for polluting enterprises by raising public environmental awareness; on the other hand, the policies have increased the production costs of enterprises while reducing their pollution emissions, prompting the polluting enterprises to move to environmental regulatory low-lying land. Therefore, it is recommended that the government, the general public, and enterprises work together to continuously improve the environmental governance and regulatory system with Chinese characteristics, closely monitor the trends of polluting enterprises, and use reasonable environmental protection requirements and standardized business practices as market access principles to promote the high-quality economic development.

Key words: environmental information disclosure, site selection for polluting enterprises, green transformation, pollution shelters, enterprise environmental costs

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