ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Do Industry Peers across and within Regions
Affect Corporate Environmental Responsibility?
Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies
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School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, No.30, Xueyuan Road,
Haidian District, Beijing 100083, P.R. China
Submission date: 2022-09-29
Final revision date: 2023-02-12
Acceptance date: 2023-02-25
Online publication date: 2023-04-18
Publication date: 2023-05-18
Corresponding author
Chu Chen
School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, No.30, Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, 100083, Beijing, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2023;32(3):2571-2587
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ABSTRACT
In the context of China’s development of modern environmental governance systems, it is crucial
to recognise the vital role played by businesses. The internal impetus for environmental governance
will be generated by accelerating the emergence of a universal industry trend of enterprises proactively
fulfilling their environmental responsibilities. Therefore, this study utilises listed A-share companies in
Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2020 as samples to investigate the peer impacts
of corporate environmental responsibility (CER). It was discovered that industry peers across and
within regions might influence CER. When companies meet their environmental duties, the peer effects
of CER may be seen as convergent responsiveness to external pressure. In a cross-regional context,
the combination of industry competitive pressure and severe environmental uncertainty may greatly
amplify the peer implications of CER, and small businesses are more susceptible to convergence. In an
intra-regional scenario, environmental regulatory pressure has dramatically diminished the peer effects
of CER, and the high-level marketisation process ensures that environmental regulatory pressure will
favour the independent fulfilment of CER. Moreover, this phenomenon is magnified in state-owned
enterprises.