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Can environmental information disclosure promote the high-quality development of enterprises? The mediating effect of intellectual capital

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Abstract

The Chinese government has given a high priority to economic high-quality development (HQD) in recent years. This study empirically examines whether environmental information disclosure (EID) can promote corporate HQD using a sample of 302 Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2018. The results show that EID has a positive impact on firms’ HQD and intellectual capital plays a mediating role in this relationship. The results remain robust and valid after a series of endogenous and robustness tests. This study significantly contributes to the existing EID literature by exploring the integrated effect of EID on corporate HQD through constructing a comprehensive indicator to measure corporate HQD, which includes economic performance, environmental performance, and social performance. The findings of our study also add impetus for enterprises to improve their EID.

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Data availability

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

EID:

Environmental information disclosure

HQD:

High-quality development

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Acknowledgements

The authors express gratitude to all those who helped us during the writing of this paper and acknowledge the advices of the anonymous reviewers to improve the quality of this study.

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Contributions

YJ chose the research ideas, formed the study framework, collected, and analysed the data; CG was the main contributor in writing the manuscript and also collected some of the data; YW reviewed and edited the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yalin Jiang.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Jiang, Y., Guo, C. & Wu, Y. Can environmental information disclosure promote the high-quality development of enterprises? The mediating effect of intellectual capital. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 30743–30757 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12921-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12921-x

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