Does religion improve corporate environmental responsibility? Evidence from China

• Published in: Corporate social-responsibility and environmental management Vol. 28; no. 2; pp. 808 - 818
• Main Authors: Chen, Kejing, Guo, Wenqi, Kang, Yanling, Wan, Qingqing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01-03-2021; Wiley Periodicals Inc
• Subjects: Buddhism; corporate environmental responsibility; corporate governance; Energy consumption; enterprises' unit energy consumption; Environmental governance; local pollution prevention; Organizational aspects; Pollution abatement; Pollution prevention; Religion
• ISSN: 1535-3958; 1535-3966
• DOI: 10.1002/csr.2090

We examine how religion influences corporate environmental responsibility (CER). With the existing literature, we analyse how Buddhism and Taoism, the most traditional and influential religion of the Chinese, could act on individual and organizational behaviours and corporate culture, and then improve CER. Taking Chinese listed companies that disclose environmental governance information from 2007 to 2016 as our sample, we find that religion contributes to the improvement of CER on corporate environmental governance, and the effect is still significant after controlling for endogenous problems and robustness tests. Furthermore, we find that religion can enhance the positive role of CER by reducing unit energy consumption and promoting local pollution prevention.