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In this paper, the authors take the central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) as an exogenous shock to study the reaction of the stock market in China. Using the event study method, the authors check how the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision affects the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of the listed firms on the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

In this paper, the authors take the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision as a clean exogenous shock to study its effects on the capital market. The authors collect daily trading data from the China stock market and accounting research (CSMAR) database, with the sample containing 1,950 Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchanges. And detailed information on CEPI supervision is obtained from the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China. The event study method is adopted to analyze the reaction of the stock market under CEPI supervision. Specifically, the authors constructed the cumulative abnormal return of each firm around the event day of CEPI. To capture the deterrent effects of CEPI supervision, the authors examine the situation of polluting and non-polluting firms in the supervised provinces, adjacent provinces and provinces that are not supervised or close to the supervised provinces, respectively.

This paper throws light on the following: (1) the polluting firms in the supervised provinces were negatively impacted by CEPI within 20 trading days of the event day, and its effects spread to the polluting firms in the neighboring provinces; (2) CEPI had a favorable impact on the non-polluting businesses in the provinces that are neither supervised nor close to the supervised provinces. The authors contend that it is because the investment is being forced out of the polluting sector and into the non-polluting sector, which is more pronounced in the provinces not directly or indirectly targeted by CEPI; (3) by comparison, the “looking back monitoring of the first round” has had no discernible detrimental impact on the firms' CAR, indicating an important role of psychology anticipation of investors in the stock market performance; (4) although not physically located in the supervised provinces, the downstream enterprises of the polluting firms suffer significantly from CEPI shock; (5) the effectiveness of CEPI supervision in the supervised provinces depends on the level of local environmental regulation and the ownership structure of the company. Private firms in the provinces with stronger environmental regulations suffer more from the CEPI shock; (6) the multivariate analysis shows that while enterprises with high ROE and financial leverage may be at risk of CAR loss, older, larger firms are less likely to experience CEPI shock; (7) the study of persistent effect reveals that the strike of CEPI supervision can last for at least 10 months after the event day and deterrent effect can be spread within the whole polluting industry.

In this paper, the authors only concentrate on the market reaction within 20 trading days after the event day. An analysis of long-term effects should be valuable to get a deeper knowledge of the capital market reaction to the CEPI policy. In addition, the paper only focuses on the first round of the first batch of CEPI. Since CEPI has been built as a constant regulation of local environmental performance, further study may need to track both the reaction of listed firms and investment behavior in the capital market.

Policy implications of the paper are as follows: First, for the policymakers, it is important to construct a constant environmental regulation system instead of a campaign movement. Second, for investors, as environmental issues are receiving increasing attention from both the government and the public, investment decisions should take into account firms' environmental performance, which can help reduce the risk from environmental regulations. Third, the firms in the polluting industry should take more action to reduce pollutant releases and adopt green technology, which is essential for sustainable development under environmental protection.

This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following aspects. First, the authors provide new evidence on the effects of environmental regulations as a shock to the stock market, which has been wildly concentrated in the literature about environmental policies evaluation and capital market reaction. Second, the authors supplement the literature on green finance and sustainability transformation, which has got increasing attention in recent years. Theoretically, by guiding investment and affecting the stock market performance, environmental regulations are considered to be an efficient way to stimulate polluting firms to transform into green development. The results of the paper support this intuition by showing that the CAR of the non-polluting firms in non-supervised provinces in fact benefit from the CEPI supervision.

As China's economy begins to transform into a high-quality development, and under the national “carbon peak and carbon neutral” target, all sectors of society and industries need to transform to green development to varying degrees, coupled with the catalyst of epidemics and other factors, new development requirements are put forward for enterprises to better fulfill their climate risk disclosure behaviors. Thus, it is clear that improving corporate climate risk disclosure is of far-reaching significance to both countries and enterprises.

This study incorporates management science, psychology and other related knowledge fields, based on stakeholder theory and media dependency theory, and aims to improve the level of corporate compliance with climate risk disclosure, suggesting the influence of entrepreneurs' visibility on corporate climate risk disclosure; on this basis, the role of entrepreneurs' visibility and media attention on corporate climate risk disclosure is verified through an empirical model; finally, targeted and effective response strategies are proposed to improve corporate climate risk disclosure, set reasonable media attention and increase the effectiveness of entrepreneurs' visibility.

This paper establishes a multiple regression model using A-share listed companies in China from 2016 to 2022 as the research sample, verifies the intrinsic association between entrepreneurial visibility and corporate climate risk climate disclosure through empirical analysis, and further examines the mediating role of media attention in the relationship between the two. The results show that entrepreneurs' visibility is positively related to the level of corporate climate risk disclosure, with media attention playing a part in mediating the relationship between the two. Increasing entrepreneurs' visibility is conducive to increasing the level of corporate climate risk disclosure. Therefore, it contributes to the dual incentive effect of reputation and compensation.

This study incorporates management science, psychology and other related knowledge fields, based on stakeholder theory and media dependency theory, and aims to improve the level of corporate compliance with climate risk disclosure, suggesting the influence of entrepreneurs' visibility on corporate climate risk disclosure; on this basis, the role of entrepreneurs' visibility and media attention on corporate climate risk disclosure is verified through an empirical model; finally, targeted and effective response strategies are proposed to improve corporate climate risk disclosure, set reasonable media attention and increase the effectiveness of entrepreneurs' visibility.

As an effective tool to promote rational resource allocation and facilitate the development of green management practices such as enterprise digital innovation, the green credit policy has recently gained extensive attention. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between green credit policies and the digital innovation of enterprises, and to further explore the mechanism of action between them and their boundary conditions.

Based on micro-level data on Chinese firms from 2007 to 2019, this paper constructs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact and intrinsic mechanisms of green credit policies on firms' digital innovation and its boundary conditions, with the help of a quasi-natural experiment, i.e. the Green Credit Guidelines.

Green credit policies inhibit digital innovation and fail to compensate for innovation. The analysis of the mechanism shows that the implementation of green credit policies has a negative impact on digital innovation by increasing the financing constraints faced by firms, and has also a crowding-out effect on R&D investment, resulting in a disincentive to digital innovation. Further analysis reveals that the negative impact of green credit policies on digital innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, enterprises without financially experienced executives, and in the eastern regions of China.

This study provides empirical evidence to understand the effectiveness and mechanism of influence of green credit policies on enterprise digital innovation, providing also a basis to further improve green credit policies.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a region that is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Renewable energy consumption could play a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change by improving environmental quality in the region. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality in sub-Saharan African countries.

The empirical investigation is based on the estimation of an augmented Green Solow model through the defactored instrumental variables approach on a sample of 34 countries over the period 1996 to 2018.

The results of two-stage defactored instrumental variables estimator show that renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality. Indeed, renewable energies have a significant negative influence on CO₂ emissions. This result is robust when using the ecological footprint as an indicator of environmental quality.

In terms of implications, governments in Sub-Saharan Africa need to pursue policies to encourage investment in the renewable energy sector. This will promote renewable energy consumption, change the structure of the energy mix in favour of renewable energy, improve environmental quality and effectively combat climate change.

The originality of this research in relation to the existing literature lies at several levels. Firstly, the analysis is carried out using a unified framework combining the environmental Kuznets curve and the environmental convergence hypotheses. Secondly, this research uses a very recent econometric method. Finally, environmental quality is measured using two indicators.

In recent years, environmental issues and resource depletion have posed significant challenges to firms and society. To address these environmental challenges, firms seek to build strategic alliances of green supply chain management (GSCM) with their supply chain partner. As the largest developing country in the Asia–Pacific region, China needs to take more responsibility for environmental protection, which requires more Chinese firms to participate in GSCM. Therefore, focusing on the issue of GSCM and innovation persistence in the context of an increasingly harsh ecological environment is essential.

To test the hypothesis, the authors perform an empirical analysis on a sample of 124 listed firms in China from 2014 to 2019. The results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses the authors performed to take care of endogeneity.

Empirical results indicate that GSCM can promote innovation persistence and both market environment turbulence and technology environment turbulence have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the two. Mechanism tests show that GSCM can improve innovation efficiency, ensure innovation quality and alleviate financing constraints, thus promoting the innovation persistence of firms.

This study can provide a theoretical basis for the country to promote GSCM orientation, raise firms' awareness of the value of GSCM, convey the significance of GSCM to investors, influence firms' investment decisions and give experience to other developing countries.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings and leverage manipulation and the moderating effects of internal and external supervision.

The authors draw on a sample of Chinese non-financial A-share-listed firms from 2013 to 2020 to explore the effect of ESG ratings on leverage manipulation. Robustness and endogeneity tests confirm the validity of the regression results.

ESG ratings inhibit leverage manipulation by improving social reputation, information transparency and financing constraints. This effect is weakened by internal supervision, captured by the ratio of institutional investor ownership, and strengthened by external supervision, captured by the level of marketization. The effect is stronger in non-state-owned firms and firms in non-polluting industries. The governance dimension of ESG exhibits the strongest effect, with comprehensive environmental governance ratings and social governance ratings also suppressing leverage manipulation.

Firms should strive to cultivate environmental awareness, fulfil their social responsibilities and enhance internal governance, which may help to strengthen the firm’s sustainability orientation, mitigate opportunistic behaviours and ultimately contribute to high-quality firm development. The top managers of firms should exercise self-restraint and take the initiative to reduce leverage manipulation by establishing an appropriate governance structure and sustainable business operation system that incorporate environmental and social governance in addition to general governance.

Policymakers and regulators should formulate unified guidelines with comprehensive criteria to improve the scope and quality of ESG information disclosure and provide specific guidance on ESG practice for firms. Investors should incorporate ESG ratings into their investment decision framework to lower their portfolio risk.

This study contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first to show that high ESG ratings may mitigate firms’ opportunistic behaviours. Secondly, it identifies the governance factor of leverage manipulation from the perspective of firms’ subjective sustainability orientation. Thirdly, it demonstrates that the relationship between ESG ratings and leverage manipulation varies with the level of internal and external supervision. Finally, it highlights the importance of governance in guaranteeing the other two dimensions’ roles by decomposing overall ESG.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of the carbon intensity constraint policy (CICP) on green innovation.

This study takes the implementation of the CICP as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a quasi–difference-in-difference method to investigate the impact of the CICP on firm green innovation from a microeconomic perspective.

The CICP significantly limits the quality of firms’ green innovation. Among the range of green patents, the CICP distorts only patents related to CO₂ emissions. The inhibitory effect is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and heavily polluting firms. R&D investment and green investor are identified as the main mechanism.

These findings provide evidence for the influence of the CICP on firm green innovation, which can guide policymakers in China and other emerging economies that prioritize carbon intensity constraint targets and the improvement of relevant auxiliary measures.

Governments and firms should have a comprehensive understanding of environmental policies and corporate behavior and need to mitigate the negative impact through a combination of measures.

This study contributes to the literature by providing additional empirical evidence regarding the two opposing sides of the ongoing debate on the positive or negative effects of CICP. It also provides new evidence on the policy effect of the CICP on firm green innovation, together with its mechanisms and heterogeneous influences.

This paper aims to explore the impact of green finance on the heterogeneity of enterprise green technology innovation and the underlying mechanism between them.

Using the data of China's A-share listed enterprises from 2008 to 2020 and the fixed effect model, the authors empirically explore the relationship and mechanism between green finance and green technology innovation by constructing the green finance index while considering both the quality and quantity of innovation.

The study suggests that green finance is positively related to the quality and quantity of enterprise green technology innovation, while green finance is more effective in stimulating the quality of green technology innovation than quantity. In addition, alleviating financial mismatch and improving the quality of environmental information disclosure are core mechanisms during the process of green finance facilitating green technology innovation. Furthermore, green finance exerts a more positive effect on the quality and quantity of green technology innovation with large-size enterprises, heavily polluting industries and enterprises in the eastern region.

This paper enriches the literature on green finance and green technology innovation and provides practical significance for green finance implementation.

This paper aims to introduce a new numerical model that predicts the flashover voltage (FOV) value in the presence of polluted air surrounding a high-voltage insulator. The model focuses on simulating the propagation of arcs and aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of FOV predictions under these specific conditions.

This arc propagation method connecting the high voltage fitting and the grounded insulator cap involves a two-step process. First, the electric field distribution in the vicinity of the insulator is obtained using finite element method analysis software. Subsequently, critical areas with intense electric field strength are identified. Random points within these critical areas are then selected as initial points for simulating the growth of electric arcs.

by increasing the electric voltage applied to the insulator fittings, the arc path is, step by step, generated until a breakdown occurs on the polluted air surrounding the insulator surface, and thus a prediction of the FOV value.

The proposed model for the FOV prediction can be a very interesting alternative to dangerous and costly experimental tests requiring an investment in time and materials.

Some works were done trying to reproduce discharge propagation but it was always with simplified models such as propagation in one direction from a point to a plane. The difficulty and the originality of the present work is the geometry complexity of the insulator with arc propagation in three distinct directions that will require several proliferation conditions.

The connection between digital manufacturing technologies (Industry 4.0) and the environment has sparked discussions on firms' disclosure of negative information on pollutant emissions and the pursuit of positive environmental outcomes. However, very few studies explore how it relates to a firm's robot usage and its mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of robot penetration on firms' environmental governance in China.

The ordered probit model (and probit model) are employed and empirically tested with a sample of 1,579 Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2019.

The study reveals a negative relationship between robot usage and the disclosure of negative indicators and a U-shaped relationship between robot usage and positive environmental outcomes. Among the sample, nonstate-owned enterprises (SOEs) display unsatisfactory performance, while heavily polluting industries disclose more information on pollutant emissions. The robot–environmental governance nexus is conditional on firm size, capital intensity and local economic development.

The study proposes a fresh view of corporate environmental governance to assess the environmental implications of robot adoption. It also contributes to identifying the curvilinear, moderating and heterogenous effects in the robot–environment nexus. The results provide rich policy implications for the development of industrial intelligence and corporate environmental governance in the circular economy (CE) context.