Substantive Transition or Short-term Strategy: A Study on the Synergistic Effects of Environmental Information Disclosure in Reducing Pollution and Carbon

Environmental information symmetry is the key to joint management of environmental issues. Will the disclosure of environmental information force enterprises to transform substantively or adopt short-term strategies? Taking the enterprise environmental information disclosure system as the natural experiment, based on the theoretical analysis of the impact mechanism and action mechanism of environmental information disclosure on the synergistic effect of pollution reduction and carbon reduction, the data of China's A-share listed enterprises from 2005 to 2022 were selected to build A differential model for empirical test. The results show that the environmental information disclosure system can realize the role of collaborative governance of pollution reduction and carbon reduction, and the conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Heterogeneity test results show that the synergistic effect of environmental information disclosure system on reducing pollution and carbon is different depending on the region, technology attribute, pollution attribute and industry attribute of the enterprise. The impact mechanism test results show that the current mechanism of environmental information disclosure system affecting the synergistic effect of pollution reduction and carbon reduction is to improve the total factor productivity of enterprises. Under the constraint of this system, enterprises mainly adopt short-term coping strategies, and enterprises have not realized substantive transformation. In addition, the environmental information disclosure system does not have a long-term effect, and enterprises tend to have short-term coping strategies; The results of regulatory effect test show that management with financial background plays a positive regulatory role in the impact of environmental information disclosure on the synergistic effect of pollution reduction and carbon reduction. The research conclusions provide useful reference for improving the long-term mechanism of environmental information disclosure, strengthening the implementation of environmental information disclosure, and promoting the substantive transformation of enterprises.