企业绿色绩效的行业落差与环保投资

《财经研究》 2022年48卷第7期 页码：94 - 108  online：2022年7月1日

企业绿色绩效的行业落差与环保投资

Green Performance Feedback and Corporate Environmental Investment

作者（中）：朱丽娜1, 张正元2, 高皓3

作者（英）：Zhu Lina1, Zhang Zhengyuan2, Gao Hao3

作者单位：1.华东理工大学 商学院, 上海 200237 2.复旦大学 管理学院, 上海 200433 3.清华大学 五道口金融学院, 北京 100083

摘要：作为经济载体的企业如何在谋求自身发展的同时保护好生态环境是转型时期企业面临的重要问题，亦是学术界关注的重要议题。文章以2010—2019年的中国上市企业为研究样本，考察了企业绿色绩效的行业落差对环保投资的影响，发现：第一，当绿色绩效低于行业期望水平时，企业会增加环保投资，这一结论在进行了选择性偏差调整、PSM检验以及不同样本的检验后依然稳健。第二，与非重污染企业相比，绿色绩效落差对企业环保投资的影响作用在重污染企业中更强；当企业面临较强的破产压力时，绿色绩效落差对企业环保投资的制约作用则会被削弱；行业竞争程度越高，绿色绩效落差对企业环保投资的促进作用越强。进一步研究发现，绿色绩效落差对企业环保投资的影响作用在国有企业中更显著；而破产压力和行业竞争程度对绿色绩效落差和企业环保投资的调节效应则在民营企业中更加显著；并且，在《环境空气质量标准（2012）》颁布后，绿色绩效落差对企业环保投资的影响作用更强。文章的研究为理解企业环保投资提供了新的视角，具有一定的理论和实践意义。

关键词：绿色绩效落差; 行业属性; 破产压力; 行业竞争; 环保投资

Summary: In recent years, scholars have explored the motivations for firms to invest in environmental protection from multiple dimensions, including the institutional level, the organizational level, and the managerial level. These studies provide multiple perspectives for understanding corporate environmental investment, but they are mostly based on a static perspective of individual firms, with less attention paid to the interactions between firms. According to the behavioral theory of firms, strategic decision-making is driven by the level of reference points. Because of their common industrialidentity, firms in the same industry are often described as members of the same population or even the same species. The constitutive rules provide organizations with a “frame of comparability”, and conformity to these rules categorizes an organization into referent fields. Therefore, firms have strong motives and opportunities to observe, learn from, and adjust to the behaviors and consequences of their industry peers. Especially, when it comes to corporate social responsibility performance, industry performance is often the minimum standard of corporate legitimacy. Taking Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019 as the research sample, this paper draws the following conclusions: First, when the green performance is below aspiration, firms will increase environmental investment. This conclusion remains robust after selective bias adjustment, PSM testing, and testing for different samples. Second, compared with non-heavily polluting firms, the effect of green performance feedback on corporate environmental investment is stronger in heavy polluting firm. Third, the greater the bankruptcy pressure faced by firms, the weaker the restriction effect of the green performance feedback on corporate environmental investment. Fourth, industry competition plays a certain role in regulating the gap between green performance feedback and corporate environmental investment. Specifically, the higher the degree of industry competition, the stronger the promoting effect of green performance feedback on corporate environmental investment. Further research finds that the impact of green performance feedback on corporate environmental investment is more significant in state-owned firm, while the moderating effect of bankruptcy pressure and industry competition on green performance feedback and corporate environmental investment is more significant in private firm. Moreover, after the release of the “Ambient Air Quality Standards 2012”, the gap of green performance aspiration has a stronger impact on corporate environmental investment. The research provides a new perspective for understanding corporate environmental investment, and has certain theoretical and practical significance. The theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows: First, most of the existing studies on the motivation of green strategy are based on the perspective of individual firms, but ignore that as a member of a group, a firm’s strategic decisions are inevitably influenced by peer firms. This paper introduces the aspiration theory into the study of corporate environmental investment, especially focusing on the key variable of industry feedback on green performance, which provides a new perspective for understanding the motivation of corporate environmental investment. Second, incorporating green performance, a non-economic performance, into corporate decision-making reference points enriches the relevant research on decision-making reference points in the field of corporate behavior. Most of the current research on the behavioral theory of firms focuses on the performance feedback of economic reference points, while ignoring how non-economic performance feedback affects corporate decision-making. This paper incorporates green performance into decision-making reference points, enriching the relevant research on the behavioral theory of firms.

Key words: green performance feedback; industry attributes; bankruptcy pressure; industry competition; environmental investment

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20220317.301

收稿日期：2021-9-14

基金项目：国家自然科学基金面上项目（71972121，71672105）

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