Intra-industry peer effect in corporate environmental information disclosure: Evidence from China

Corporate environmental information disclosure is an important way for stakeholders to understand the performance of corporate environmental responsibilities. To explore the group relevance of corporate environmental information disclosure, this paper empirically tests the intra-industry peer effect of corporate environmental information disclosure using a panel fixed-effects model based on data of Chinese heavily polluted listed companies from 2015 to 2019 and studies its formation mechanism and impact path. The results show that there is an intra-industry peer effect in corporate environmental information disclosure; this effect exists in corporations of different ownership; social learning mechanism and environmental pressure mechanism are the channels to form the intra-industry peer effect of corporate environmental information disclosure; there are both intra-group imitation and inter-group imitation in the intra-industry peer effect of corporate environmental information disclosure. Based on the research results, the government can select corporations in various industries with excellent quality of environmental information disclosure as benchmarks to provide learning templates for corporations with inferior information. At the same time, the government can impose appropriate environmental protection pressure to promote learning and imitation among corporations. It is important to note that when selecting benchmarking companies, priority should be given to large and high-performing corporations.