IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v84y2022ics1057521922003301.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of air pollution on accounting conservatism

Author

Listed:
  • Wu, Junfeng
  • Liu, Baohua
  • Chang, Samuel
  • Chan, Kam C.

Abstract

We examine the impact of air pollution on a firm's accounting policy conservatism. We hypothesize that, in response to risks associated with increased air pollution, firms apply more conservative accounting practices and utilize more conservative estimates in their reporting. Using a sample of Chinese firms, accounting conservatism measures, and a satellite-based air pollution metric, we confirm the validity of our hypothesis. Additional analysis suggests that the impact of air pollution on accounting policy conservatism is more salient for firms in high-pollution industries, firms under severe financial constraint, firms with higher environmental risk, and firms that receive high media coverage. Further, we document that air pollution does not significantly affect a firm's return on assets, year-on-year sales growth, or Tobin's Q measure. Hence, it is management's risk perception, not objective performance concern, that is driving accounting conservatism. Finally, specifically investigating accounting conservatism, we discover that, for firms with higher pollution levels, selling general and administrative expenses, liabilities provision, accrued expenses, and asset impairment loss are significantly higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Wu, Junfeng & Liu, Baohua & Chang, Samuel & Chan, Kam C., 2022. "Effects of air pollution on accounting conservatism," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:84:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922003301
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102380
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521922003301
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102380?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Dobler & Kaouthar Lajili & Daniel Zéghal, 2014. "Environmental Performance, Environmental Risk and Risk Management," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Fernando Broner & Paula Bustos & Vasco Carvalho, 2011. "Sources of comparative advantage in polluting industries," Economics Working Papers 1331, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2019.
    3. Hsieh, Chia-Chun & Ma, Zhiming & Novoselov, Kirill E., 2019. "Accounting conservatism, business strategy, and ambiguity," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 41-55.
    4. Giancarlo Giudici & Emilia Tona & Krishna Reddy & Wang Dai, 2019. "The Effects of Environmental Disasters and Pollution Alerts on Chinese Equity Markets," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(2), pages 251-271, January.
    5. Tom Y. Chang & Joshua Graff Zivin & Tal Gross & Matthew Neidell, 2019. "The Effect of Pollution on Worker Productivity: Evidence from Call Center Workers in China," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 151-172, January.
    6. Xudong Ji & Wei Lu & Wen Qu, 2016. "Internal control weakness and accounting conservatism in China," Managerial Auditing Journal, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 31(6/7), pages 688-726, June.
    7. Hering, Laura & Poncet, Sandra, 2014. "Environmental policy and exports: Evidence from Chinese cities," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 296-318.
    8. Jeong†Bon Kim & Liandong Zhang, 2016. "Accounting Conservatism and Stock Price Crash Risk: Firm†level Evidence," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(1), pages 412-441, March.
    9. Juhyun Jung & Kathleen Herbohn & Peter Clarkson, 2018. "Carbon Risk, Carbon Risk Awareness and the Cost of Debt Financing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(4), pages 1151-1171, July.
    10. Yuanhui Li & Rongrong Chen & Erwei Xiang, 2022. "Corporate social responsibility, green financial system guidelines, and cost of debt financing: Evidence from pollution‐intensive industries in China," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(3), pages 593-608, May.
    11. Vivek Ghosal & Andreas Stephan & Jan F. Weiss, 2019. "Decentralized environmental regulations and plant‐level productivity," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(6), pages 998-1011, September.
    12. Baohua Liu & Junfeng Wu & Kam C. Chan, 2021. "Does air pollution change a firm's business strategy for employing capital and labor?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(8), pages 3671-3685, December.
    13. Thi‐Hong‐Van Hoang & Wojciech Przychodzen & Justyna Przychodzen & Elysé A. Segbotangni, 2020. "Does it pay to be green? A disaggregated analysis of U.S. firms with green patents," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 1331-1361, March.
    14. Samar Khairy Ghanem, 2018. "The relationship between population and the environment and its impact on sustainable development in Egypt using a multi-equation model," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 305-342, February.
    15. Tom Chang & Joshua Graff Zivin & Tal Gross & Matthew Neidell, 2016. "Particulate Pollution and the Productivity of Pear Packers," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 141-169, August.
    16. Khan, Mozaffar & Watts, Ross L., 2009. "Estimation and empirical properties of a firm-year measure of accounting conservatism," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2-3), pages 132-150, December.
    17. He, Guanming & Lin, Tiantian, 2022. "Does air pollution impair investment efficiency?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    18. Tzouvanas, Panagiotis & Mamatzakis, Emmanuel C., 2021. "Does it pay to invest in environmental stocks?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    19. Wilson X. B. Li & Tina T. He & Andrew Marshall & Gordon Y. N. Tang, 2020. "An empirical analysis of accounting conservatism surrounding share repurchases," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(4), pages 609-627, December.
    20. Jialing Huang & Janet Z. Yang, 2020. "Beyond under the dome: an environmental documentary amplified public risk perception about air pollution in China," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 227-241, February.
    21. Kini, Omesh & Williams, Ryan, 2012. "Tournament incentives, firm risk, and corporate policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 350-376.
    22. Xiangting Kong & Suresh Radhakrishnan & Albert Tsang, 2017. "Corporate Lobbying, Visibility and Accounting Conservatism," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5-6), pages 527-557, May.
    23. Pierluigi Toma & Pier Paolo Miglietta & Domenico Morrone & Donatella Porrini, 2020. "Environmental risks and efficiency performances: The vulnerability of Italian forestry firms," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(6), pages 2793-2803, November.
    24. Jianhua Tan & Kam C. Chan & Yining Chen, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on the cost of debt financing: Evidence from the bond market," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 464-482, January.
    25. Thi Hong Van Hoang & Justyna Przychodzen & Wojciech Przychodzen & Elysé Segbotangni, 2020. "Does it pay to be green? A disaggregated analysis of US firms with green patents," Post-Print hal-02518497, HAL.
    26. Yukun Pan & Rui Zhao, 2022. "Does Mandatory Disclosure of CSR Reports Affect Accounting Conservatism? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(7), pages 1975-1987, May.
    27. Xuehui Zhang & Jianhua Tan & Kam C. Chan, 2021. "Air pollution and initial public offering underpricing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(39), pages 4582-4595, August.
    28. Ghanem, Dalia & Zhang, Junjie, 2014. "‘Effortless Perfection:’ Do Chinese cities manipulate air pollution data?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 203-225.
    29. Dong, Rui & Fisman, Raymond & Wang, Yongxiang & Xu, Nianhang, 2021. "Air pollution, affect, and forecasting bias: Evidence from Chinese financial analysts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 971-984.
    30. Meysam Bolgorian & Ali Mayeli, 2020. "Accounting conservatism and money laundering risk," Accounting Research Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 33(2), pages 343-361, February.
    31. Rory Sullivan & Andy Gouldson, 2017. "The Governance of Corporate Responses to Climate Change: An International Comparison," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 413-425, May.
    32. Christian Oltra & Roser Sala, 2018. "Perception of risk from air pollution and reported behaviors: a cross-sectional survey study in four cities," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(7), pages 869-884, July.
    33. Jun Hu & Wenbin Long & Gary Gang Tian & Daifei (Troy) Yao, 2020. "CEOs’ experience of the Great Chinese Famine and accounting conservatism," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(9-10), pages 1089-1112, October.
    34. Chengru Hu & Wei Jiang, 2019. "Managerial risk incentives and accounting conservatism," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 781-813, April.
    35. repec:eme:maj000:maj-08-2015-1234 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Daniel A. Cohen & Aiyesha Dey & Thomas z. Lys, 2013. "Corporate Governance Reform and Executive Incentives: Implications for Investments and Risk Taking," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 1296-1332, December.
    37. Anagnostopoulou, Seraina C. & Tsekrekos, Andrianos E. & Voulgaris, Georgios, 2021. "Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4).
    38. Michael Machokoto & Geofry Areneke & Davis Nyangara, 2021. "Financial conservatism, firm value and international business risk: Evidence from emerging economies around the global financial crisis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 4590-4608, July.
    39. Tri Tri Nguyen & Chau Minh Duong & Nguyet Thi Minh Nguyen & Hung Quang Bui, 2020. "Accounting conservatism and banking expertise on board of directors," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 501-539, August.
    40. Inder K. Khurana & Wei Wang, 2019. "International Mergers and Acquisitions Laws, the Market for Corporate Control, and Accounting Conservatism," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 241-290, March.
    41. Regina M. Anctil & John Dickhaut & Chandra Kanodia & Brian Shapiro, 2004. "Information Transparency and Coordination Failure: Theory and Experiment," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 159-195, May.
    42. Han, Lin & Cheng, Xiaoke & Chan, Kam C. & Gao, Shenghao, 2022. "Does air pollution affect seasoned equity offering pricing? Evidence from investor bids," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 59(PB).
    43. Steven N. Kaplan & Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Do Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivities Provide Useful Measures of Financing Constraints?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 169-215.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ma, Xinru & He, Jingbin, 2023. "Air pollution and corporate green innovation in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baohua Liu & Junfeng Wu & Kam C. Chan, 2021. "Does air pollution change a firm's business strategy for employing capital and labor?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(8), pages 3671-3685, December.
    2. Cao, Feng & Zhang, Xueyan & Yuan, Rongli, 2022. "Do geographically nearby major customers mitigate suppliers’ stock price crash risk?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(6).
    3. Yao, Yao & Li, Xue & Smyth, Russell & Zhang, Lin, 2022. "Air pollution and political trust in local government: Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    4. Kam C. Chan & Tao Chen & Baohua Liu & Junfeng Wu, 2022. "Air pollution and CEO compensation: Evidence from China," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 448-469, April.
    5. Wang, Li & Dai, Yunhao & Kong, Dongmin, 2021. "Air pollution and employee treatment," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    6. Shihe Fu & V. Brian Viard, 2022. "A mayors perspective on tackling air pollution," Chapters, in: Charles K.Y. Leung (ed.), Handbook of Real Estate and Macroeconomics, chapter 16, pages 413-437, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. He Xiao, 2022. "How does air pollution affect corporate information environment?," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 987-1016, December.
    8. Tri Tri Nguyen & Chau Minh Duong & Nguyet Thi Minh Nguyen & Hung Quang Bui, 2020. "Accounting conservatism and banking expertise on board of directors," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 501-539, August.
    9. Liu, Haoming & Salvo, Alberto, 2017. "Severe Air Pollution and School Absences: Longitudinal Data on Expatriates in North China," IZA Discussion Papers 11134, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Guo, Liwen & Cheng, Zhiming & Tani, Massimiliano & Cook, Sarah & Zhao, Jiaqi & Chen, Xi, 2022. "Air Pollution and Entrepreneurship," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1196, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    11. Wang, Jie & Wang, Wanwan & Yuan, Fang, 2023. "Air pollution and corporate risk-taking: Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 570-586.
    12. Anagnostopoulou, Seraina C. & Tsekrekos, Andrianos E. & Voulgaris, Georgios, 2021. "Accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4).
    13. Luis Sarmiento & Adam Nowakowski, 2023. "Court Decisions and Air Pollution: Evidence from Ten Million Penal Cases in India," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 86(3), pages 605-644, November.
    14. Jiang, Dequan & Li, Weiping & Shen, Yongjian & Zhang, Ying, 2022. "Does air quality affect firms’ investment efficiency? Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-17.
    15. Yu, Shuangli & Shen, Yuxin & Zhang, Fan & Shen, Yongjian & Xu, Zefeng, 2022. "Air pollution and executive incentive: Evidence from pay-performance sensitivity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    16. Balachandran, Balasingham & Duong, Huu Nhan & Luong, Hoang & Nguyen, Lily, 2020. "Does takeover activity affect stock price crash risk? Evidence from international M&A laws," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    17. Sun, Sophia Li & Habib, Ahsan & Huang, Hedy Jiaying, 2019. "Tournament incentives and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 93-117.
    18. Ramírez-Orellana, Alicia & Martínez-Victoria, MCarmen & García-Amate, Antonio & Rojo-Ramírez, Alfonso A., 2023. "Is the corporate financial strategy in the oil and gas sector affected by ESG dimensions?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    19. Jiekun Huang & Nianhang Xu & Honghai Yu, 2020. "Pollution and Performance: Do Investors Make Worse Trades on Hazy Days?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4455-4476, October.
    20. Guo, Feng & Lin, Zhiyuan & Lyu, Xiaoliang & Shi, Qingling, 2023. "Does air pollution influence music sentiment? Measuring music sentiment by machine learning," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:84:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922003301. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620166 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.