Imitation behavior in environmental, social, and governance disclosure: Textual analysis evidence from Chinese listed enterprises

IF 3.6 2区 哲学 Q2 BUSINESS
Qiyu Huang, Yan Zhang, Xiang Li, Fei Wang
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The era of sustainable transformation has witnessed an increase in corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure waves. Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2021 as a sample, this study adopted textual analysis and machine-learning techniques to analyze ESG reports and explore the imitation behavior of ESG disclosures in emerging Chinese markets for the first time. The results show imitation behavior exists in corporate ESG disclosures from the perspective of group association. Regarding the imitation object, enterprises tend to choose the peer average level as a reference rather than the best enterprise in the same industry, which reveals the inherent law that enterprises' ESG disclosures are satisfied with compliance rather than championship. In terms of effects, the ESG-mimetic isomorphic pressure has no incremental information effect but has an efficiency optimization effect. Furthermore, the imitation intensity and impact effects of ESG disclosure behavior exhibit heterogeneity owing to differences in properties, sales growth rates, and external attention. This study expands the motivation for corporate ESG disclosure behavior and enriches the empirical evidence for institutional isomorphism.

环境、社会和治理信息披露中的模仿行为:来自中国上市企业的文本分析证据
可持续转型时代,企业环境、社会和治理(ESG)披露浪潮一浪高过一浪。本研究以2016年至2021年的中国A股上市公司为样本,采用文本分析和机器学习技术对ESG报告进行分析,首次探索了中国新兴市场ESG披露的模仿行为。研究结果表明,从群体关联的角度来看,企业ESG披露中存在模仿行为。在模仿对象上,企业倾向于选择同行平均水平而非同行业最佳企业作为参照,揭示了企业ESG披露满足于合规性而非冠军性的内在规律。从效果来看,ESG模仿同构压力没有信息增量效应,但有效率优化效应。此外,由于属性、销售增长率和外部关注度的差异,ESG信息披露行为的模仿强度和影响效应表现出异质性。本研究拓展了企业 ESG 披露行为的动机,丰富了制度同构的实证证据。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
5.20
自引率
19.00%
发文量
86
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