Enterprises should bear the main responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. Disclosing carbon emission information is one of the important ways for enterprises to deal with climate change. Taking China’s A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2018 as the research sample, we study the impact of external explicit institutional pressure and implicit institutional pressure on corporate carbon information disclosure and analyze the mediating effect of enterprise peer influence in carbon disclosure. The empirical results show that external institutional pressure, namely environmental regulation and Confucian culture, has a significant positive impact on enterprise carbon information disclosure. Enterprise peer influence has a certain mediating effect between external institutional pressure and carbon information disclosure. The government should formulate and improve the carbon information disclosure institution and strengthen external supervision through the joint participation of all sectors of society.

In recent years, economic growth has caused an increasing number of environmental problems in China. In order to achieve the goal of carbon peak on schedule, enterprises need to accelerate green transformation and upgrading. Environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation are important means of corporate environmental governance strategy, but it is unknown whether they can promote the sustainable development of enterprises. Therefore, this article will analyze the effect of enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation on financial performance. Based on relevant theories, this study builds a theoretical model to demonstrate how enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation can affect the financial performance of heavy polluting enterprises. Empirical tests are carried out using 293 heavy polluting enterprises in China as the sample. The results reveal that: (i) Enterprise environmental protection expenditure has significant negative effects on current enterprise financial performance, while green technology innovation can significantly promote enterprise financial performance. (ii) When the lag period is two periods, the enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation have positive effects on enterprise financial performance respectively, and the effects are the most significant. (iii) Enterprise environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation synergistically promote enterprise financial performance in the current period, and the impact has a lag effect. (iv) In state-owned enterprises and enterprises with higher corporate governance level, the synergetic promotion effect of environmental protection expenditure and green technology innovation on enterprise financial performance is more significant. Finally, this study provides suggestions for promoting the transformation and upgrading of heavy polluting enterprises and achieving sustainable development from the perspectives of the government, enterprises and the public.

The increasingly serious environmental problems, such as rising sea levels and heavy smog, have made environmental consciousness in society more urgent. The key issue is how to motivate firms to disclose environmental information. In this paper, we use data on 200 listed enterprises in China as a sample and research the factors that affect voluntary carbon disclosure. We found that local government regulatory pressure and social pressure have different levels of influence on carbon information disclosure of state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises; local government regulatory pressure have a greater impact on state-owned enterprises’ carbon information disclosure, while social pressures have a greater impact on non-state-owned enterprises. Finally, we make some suggestions aimed at promoting disclosure of carbon information.