Environmental legitimacy pressure, political connection and impression management of carbon information disclosure

Abstract Using sample firms from eight energy-intensive industries included in the State Council of China’s Notice on the Pilot Work of Carbon Emission Trading from 2015 to 2019, this study examines the relationship between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure, and explores the moderating effect of political connection on this relationship. The baseline results show that environmental legitimacy pressure is positively associated with impression management of carbon information disclosure, and political connection moderates this relationship, that is, the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in politically-connected firms is stronger than that in non-politically-connected firms. The results are robust to various sensitivity tests. Further analyses show that (i) the positive association between environmental legitimacy pressure and impression management of carbon information disclosure in non-state owned enterprises (non-SOEs) is stronger than that in SOEs, (ii) firms facing higher negative environmental legitimacy pressure have stronger motivation to conduct impression management of carbon information disclosure, (iii) firms facing environmental legitimacy pressure conduct both selective disclosure and expressive manipulation but they have stronger motivation to conduct expressive manipulation. This study extends the literature on impression management of carbon information disclosure. The findings in this study provide policy implications not only for China but also for countries with large carbon emission.