Information Disclosure and Green Innovation in the Manufacturing Sector in China

This doctoral research aims to understand the environmental information provision of firms, clarified as firms’ mandatory and voluntary environmental disclosure, and to investigate how the environmental information disclosure incentivizes firms to innovate. As the increasing importance of environmental issues in business has led to a greater demand for environmental information, there is little empirical literature that aimed to clarify the relations between information provision and environmental efficiency improvement. This research makes contributions by presenting the impact of environmental disclosure on firms’ green innovation with novel data in Chinese manufacturing industries. Since firms are heterogeneous in their financial constraints, regulation stringency, and tolerance to public pressures, such variables would shape firms’ engagement in environmental technological innovation, this project further investigates how these factors moderate the effect of firms’ environmental disclosure on green innovation.