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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) on corporate cash holdings. This paper also investigates the moderating effects of ownership type and institutional environment between CER and corporate cash holdings.

This study uses the data of the most polluting listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchange markets over the period 2010–2019. CER data from Hexun.com (a professional CSR evaluation system) are used to measure CER performance. Two proxies are used to measure the level of cash holdings simultaneously, where CASH1 is calculated as the ratio of cash and cash equivalents to total assets, and CASH2 is calculated as the ratio of cash and cash equivalents to net assets (total assets minus cash and cash equivalents). Finally, multiple regression analysis is applied to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that environmentally responsible companies hold substantially less cash, and the result is statistically significant and robust even after using firm fixed effects and applying alternative measures of cash holdings or alleviating potential endogeneity. In addition, the results of cross-sectional tests show that the negative relation between CER and corporate cash holdings is concentrated among non-state-owned enterprises, and firms in provinces with more developed institutions. Furthermore, the result of the analysis of the economic consequence shows CER significantly increases the value of cash holdings.

This study focuses on China's institutional context, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other countries. However, the objective of this research can be studied in other institutional settings, so the above limitations provide a springboard for further research. Furthermore, the environmental protection investment, green technology innovation, and even pollutant discharge of companies can also be important indicators to measure the performance of firms in fulfilling their environmental responsibilities, which can be considered in future research.

The findings of this study may help company management in China to establish a correct view of environmental responsibility to achieve corporate value creation and corporate sustainability. And our research can also provide the policy reference value for the Chinese government to further improve environmental protection policies and systems, guide enterprises to conduct green production to realize the country's vision of an environmentally friendly society.

Based on the current background that countries in the world advocate the development of a green economy, this is the first study to examine the impacts of the environmental responsibility of the most polluting companies on corporate cash holdings and the value of cash holdings in the context of China, an emerging market.

While corporations may embrace the concepts of social and environmental responsibility, numerous examples exist to show corporations claiming to act sustainably and responsibly, while simultaneously showing disregard for the communities in which they operate and causing considerable environmental damage.

This chapter argues that such activities illustrate a particular notion of Baumol’s (1990) criminal entrepreneurialism where both creative and constructive compliance combine to subvert environmental regulation and its enforcement.

This chapter employs a case study approach assessing the current corporate environmental responsibility landscape against the reality of corporate environmental offending. Its case study shows seemingly repeated environmental offending by Shell Oil against a backdrop of the company claiming to have integrated environmental monitoring and scrutiny into its operating procedures.

The chapter concludes that corporate assertion of environmental credentials is itself often a form of criminal entrepreneurship where corporations embrace voluntary codes of practice and self-regulation while internally promoting the drive for success and profitability and/or avoidance of the costs of true environmental compliance deemed too high. As a result, this chapter argues that responsibility for environmental damage requires regulation to ensure corporate responsibility for environmental damage.

The chapter employs a green criminological perspective to its analysis of corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurship. Thus, it considers not only just strict legal definitions of crime and criminal behaviour but also the overlap between the legal and the illegal and the preference of governments to use administrative or civil penalties as tools to deal with corporate environmental offending.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test competing models of the different causal relationships regarding the motivations for corporate environmental responsibility, the adoption of environmental product policies and the related enhancement of environmental performance.

This study uses a mail survey and employs structural equation modeling to test the different relationships among the constructs examined. By testing the fitness of the competing model models, the appropriate relationships are identified.

The environmental performance is directly influenced by instrumental motives and political motives, which have indirect effects on environmental performance through corporate environmental responsibility. These also reveal that instrumental motives have marginal effects on both corporate environmental responsibility and environmental performance, and the marginal effects of political motives on environmental performance are also clearly shown. Notably, the results reveal that the corporate environmental responsibly is a pivot in these cause‐effect relationships.

Although this study provides researchers and policy makers with a framework to study environmental responsibility in different business environments, it did not undertake a deeper analysis to better understand business and organizational cultures and business environments regarding the implementation of an environmentally oriented policy. Furthermore, the model was only tested with survey data from Taiwan, although some of samples operate internationally.

From the perspective of a practical business context, practitioners should implement corporate responsibility policies that are specifically related to their political environments. For example, when doing businesses in Taiwan, the political motives involved in environmental protection will be the key to success when undertaking policies related to corporate environmental responsibility.

The results of this research indicate that there is an indirect heavy loading of corporate environmental responsibility on environmental performance. Therefore, corporate environmental responsibility is the pivotal factor in firms' adoption of environmentally oriented policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between earnings management (EM) and subsamples of corporate environmental responsibility (CER).

KLD data are used to generate subsamples of environmental “strengths” and “concerns”. Differences in EM are studied across subsamples, using discretionary accruals to proxy for EM. The samples consist of 2,171 US firms.

Firms with at least one environmental strength do not exhibit statistically different levels of EM, relative to environmentally neutral firms, while firms with at least one environmental concern do exhibit statistically greater EM (greater income‐increasing discretionary accruals), relative to other sample firms. Further, firms with multiple environmental concerns exhibit greater EM than firms with a single environmental concern. These findings do not support the political cost hypothesis per the CER/EM literature, but they do support the institutional hypothesis (in the case of environmental strengths) and myopia avoidance hypothesis (in the case of environmental concerns) per the broader corporate social responsibility (CSR)/EM literature.

The findings are limited to US firms; results may not be transferable to other countries. KLD data are binary, and thus may not capture the full array of CER.

The findings may aid interested parties in detecting EM.

The paper provides a new testing environment for theoretical frameworks established in the CER/EM and CSR/EM literatures. Additionally, the findings differ across subsamples, suggesting that the relationship between CER and EM is asymmetric.

This paper aims to provide multinational corporations (MNCs) with a portfolio of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) responses that help curbing the exacerbated negative environmental externalities caused by their business activities in emerging and developing economies.

This paper transposes the market-related concept of institutional voids to the context of CER, that is, to the context of exacerbated negative environmental externalities as result of absent, weak or incoherent institutions.

This paper proposes that the transfer of products, processes and business models from developed to emerging or developing economies often gives rise to exacerbated negative externalities because of institutional voids in environmental protection. Thus, it suggests a portfolio of CER responses – circumventing, coping and compensating – that allow MNCs to mitigate the exacerbated negative environmental externalities caused by them.

The authors present an analytical framework for identifying and navigating environment related institutional voids, which serves as a starting point for an action research approach. In tune with recent calls for critical performativity in critical management studies, the action research approach aims at tackling the real-life problem of exacerbated negative environmental externalities caused by MNCs’ activities in emerging and developing economies.

This paper sensitizes scholars, policymakers and managers to exacerbated negative environmental externalities within the context of international business activities in emerging and developing economies. The contribution provides stakeholders with a better understanding of the causes as well as alternative responses to the problem.

This paper transposes the market-related concept of institutional voids and the strategic responses to dealing with them to the non-market context of CER. The authors argue that institutional voids can be seen as the absence or poor functioning of formal and informal institutions for environmental protection, resulting in exacerbated negative environmental externalities.

Though enormous research studies were conducted on corporate environmental responsibility (CER), few of them could empirically justify how CER helps to improve firm’s competitive advantage and firms are still hesitant to incorporate CER with their business strategy at present. The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically explore how the CER strategy could help the firm to gain competitive advantage in Chinese context, particularly in terms of achieving brand sustainability (BS).

In this study, 310 listed companies in China were chosen as research sample. First, the CER strategies were classified into developing eco-friendly products, adopting EMAS or other eco-management, enhancing the impact of CER through value chain and charitable CER. Second, BS is constructed as two dimensions, i.e. resource-acquisition and consumer impact. Accordingly, this paper analyzed the relationship between CER and BS with regression model analysis, taking account of several moderating and control variables.

The results indicate that CER strategies have positive effect on BS. Among all CER strategies, developing eco-friendly products and charitable CER undertakings are the most effective ones to promote BS performance. Also, the paper found that the length of time in adopting CER strategy moderates the effect of CER on BS. The empirical evidence proves that CER strategies could enhance the brand value in terms of BS and help the company to gain competitive advantage.

First, most of our samples are of the state-owned enterprises, so our assumption might not be applicable to other types of business. Second, corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is an important factor in the relation between CSR and corporate performance, but it is not taken into account in this study. Third, the difference in industries and ownership in this research is out of concern.

As this paper has provided empirical evidence to reveal the effectiveness of different CER strategies, firms in China could be more motivated to undertake CER not only for the sake of environment but also for their brand value and competitive advantage. More importantly, this paper could be a valuable reference for the firms in China to choose suitable and effective CER strategies, as proved in this study, to gain competitive advantage in the market.

At first, while public environmental awareness has improved gradually, we introduce the BS concept to explain how the CER strategies affect CCA. This approach gives us another perspective to highlight the relationship between these two constructs. Second, we conducted our research from practical perspective to explore how to apply the CER undertakings as the company’s strategy. Third, we conducted our empirical research in Chinese context, which will enrich the theoretical CER and CSR literature.

This paper aims to put forward typology of factors for corporate environmental responsibility for easy comprehension and to propose a conceptual framework taking into account factors, barriers and benefits of corporate environmental responsibility. It also aims to suggest how corporate environmentalism is evolving in a developing country context.

This is a conceptual paper, based on review of literature and the gaps in it. An attempt has been made to incorporate various aspects of corporate environmental responsibility and study the relationship between them.

The framework suggests parameters for policy makers to facilitate corporations in implementing corporate environmentalism. Managers will realize the barriers and benefits of corporate environmental responsibility and can adapt to implement environmental responsibility.

A rational approach is applied which takes into account three basic aspects of environmental responsibility and their inter‐relationship. The paper tries to propose an answer to the ambiguity behind progress of environmental responsibility.

This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) practices and different types of innovation carried out by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The authors employ the bivariate probit model and the two-stage least squares regression model to estimate the effects of CER on process innovation and product innovation of SMEs.

The findings show that while CER is not significantly related to product innovation, it has a positive and significant effect on process innovation. Further analysis indicates that CER engagement increases labor productivity and financial performance of SMEs.

Corporate managers should view implementation of environmental responsibility practices as a strategy to foster process innovation and boost labor productivity and financial performance. For policy makers, government support for firms proactively engaging in CER practices could encourage firms to pursue innovative activities, which are vital to their long-term success as well as to the society's prosperity.

This study makes several important contributions. First, the authors provide new empirical evidence regarding the different effects of engaging in environmentally friendly practices on firm innovation in an under-examined emerging market setting. Second, the authors enrich our understanding of potential benefits of CER implementation. Third, the findings suggest that firm innovation may play a mediating role in the CER–firm performance association.

Against the background of the enormous economic transition China is undertaking, government intervention over corporate behavior is a frequent and, arguably, necessary measure. Among the most serious problems facing China, economically and reputationally, are environmental issues. So, how is the government intervening in the environmental performance of Chinese enterprises? And how are Chinese enterprises responding? These are the questions to be answered in this study.

This paper sampled listed companies on China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. The data were collected from the HeXun corporate social responsibility report, CSMAR and WIND databases. A Tobit model was used to conduct the main 2SLS regression analysis, and the robustness tests followed the propensity score matching method.

The analysis shows that environmental performance is positively related to the government subsidies a company receives. The “Eight-point Regulation of the Centre” crack-down on social corruption introduced in 2012 has weakened rent-seeking overall, but rent-seeking behavior through the cloak of corporate environmental performance has become more serious. As a result, non-polluting and state-owned enterprises are significantly less concerned about their environmental performance, while polluting and private enterprises are more motivated to become good environmental citizens.

This research provides a greater understanding of the drivers behind environmentally-responsible behavior in Chinese companies. These insights can be used by policymakers and environmental regulators to incentivize a more widespread ground-swell of change across the gamut of Chinese business.

Environmental policy and practice informed by research-driven recommendations can not only make valuable contributions to the health and well-being of Chinese society but also, as a significant contributor to climate change, environmental reforms have global benefits.

This study explores the motivations behind rent-seeking associated with environmental investment. The findings expand the research horizon of relevant literature on corporate political rent-seeking and deepen the understandings of the economic consequences of corporate investment into environmental practice. The results provide empirical evidence for the Chinese government to implement environmental regulations based on incentives beyond simple profit-making.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between and corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and audit risk.

A survey participation request was mailed to 5,008 US auditors at random. The request provided a link to an electronic survey. The final sample consists of anonymous responses from 163 auditors.

The authors find that auditors, on average, do not perceive a significant relationship between corporate environmental strengths and audit risk; however, they do perceive an increase in audit risk among firms with corporate environmental concerns. Use of CER in the risk assessment process also varies across types of CER: 15 per cent of auditors use corporate environmental strengths to assess audit risk, while 43 per cent of auditors use corporate environmental concerns to assess audit risk. Perception of the CER/audit risk relationship is a significant determinant of CER use. Finally, both types of CER are found to have average usefulness in the risk assessment process.

The findings are limited to US auditors; results may not be transferable to other countries.

Studies involving the impact of CER on earnings generally involve archival data. By examining the impact of CER on audit risk, using a unique dataset, the authors present a different and timely setting to study the CER/earnings relationship. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to document the relationship between CER and audit risk.