IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v49y2022ics154461232200383x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does air pollution affect dividend policy

Author

Listed:
  • Hu, Zhenyu
  • Chang, Jui-Chin

Abstract

We investigate the influence of air pollution in a firm's dividend policy in China. We find that firms pay lower amount of cash dividends if the firms are located at a severe air pollution city. Our analyses further show that the effect is stronger in the state-owned firms, key monitoring firms, and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 non-certified firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Hu, Zhenyu & Chang, Jui-Chin, 2022. "Does air pollution affect dividend policy," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:49:y:2022:i:c:s154461232200383x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.103183
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S154461232200383X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2022.103183?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. Ambrey, Christopher L. & Fleming, Christopher M. & Chan, Andrew Yiu-Chung, 2014. "Estimating the cost of air pollution in South East Queensland: An application of the life satisfaction non-market valuation approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 172-181.
    2. Earnhart, Dietrich & Lizal, Lubomir, 2006. "Effects of ownership and financial performance on corporate environmental performance," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 111-129, March.
    3. Tan, Zhidong & Yan, Lina, 2021. "Does air pollution impede corporate innovation?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 937-951.
    4. Samy Ben Naceur & Mohamed Goaied & Amel Belanes, 2006. "On the Determinants and Dynamics of Dividend Policy," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 6(1‐2), pages 1-23, March.
    5. Fodil Adjaoud & Walid Ben‐Amar, 2010. "Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy: Shareholders’ Protection or Expropriation?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5‐6), pages 648-667, June.
    6. Bøhren, Øyvind & Josefsen, Morten G. & Steen, Pål E., 2012. "Stakeholder conflicts and dividend policy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 2852-2864.
    7. Herrerias, M.J. & Cuadros, A. & Orts, V., 2013. "Energy intensity and investment ownership across Chinese provinces," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 286-298.
    8. Levinson, Arik, 2012. "Valuing public goods using happiness data: The case of air quality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 869-880.
    9. Brav, Alon & Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Michaely, Roni, 2005. "Payout policy in the 21st century," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 483-527, September.
    10. Tan, Jianhua & Tan, Zhidong & Chan, Kam C., 2021. "Does air pollution affect a firm's cash holdings?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    11. Andrea M. Romi, 2014. "The Cost of Carbon: Capital Market Effects of the Proposed Emission Trading Scheme (ETS)," Social and Environmental Accountability Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 54-56, April.
    12. Fodil Adjaoud & Walid Ben-Amar, 2010. "Corporate Governance and Dividend Policy: Shareholders' Protection or Expropriation?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5-6), pages 648-667.
    13. Louis T. W. Cheng & Hung‐Gay Fung & Tak Yan Leung, 2009. "Dividend preference of tradable‐share and non‐tradable‐share holders in Mainland China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 49(2), pages 291-316, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Levy, Tamir & Yagil, Joseph, 2011. "Air pollution and stock returns in the US," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 374-383, June.
    16. Firth, Michael & Gao, Jin & Shen, Jianghua & Zhang, Yuanyuan, 2016. "Institutional stock ownership and firms’ cash dividend policies: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 91-107.
    17. Holz, Carsten A., 2002. "Long live China's state-owned enterprises: deflating the myth of poor financial performance," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 493-529.
    18. Xue, Shuyu & Zhang, Bohui & Zhao, Xiaofeng, 2021. "Brain drain: The impact of air pollution on firm performance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    19. Kathryn L. Dewenter & Vincent A. Warther, 1998. "Dividends, Asymmetric Information, and Agency Conflicts: Evidence from a Comparison of the Dividend Policies of Japanese and U.S. Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(3), pages 879-904, June.
    20. Baker, H. Kent & Smith, David M., 2006. "In search of a residual dividend policy," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-18.
    21. H. Kent Baker & David M. Smith, 2006. "In search of a residual dividend policy," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 1-18.
    22. repec:eme:jaar00:09675420910963360 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Basil Al‐Najjar & Khaled Hussainey, 2009. "The association between dividend payout and outside directorships," Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10(1), pages 4-19, May.
    24. Cormier, Denis & Magnan, Michel & Morard, Bernard, 1993. "The impact of corporate pollution on market valuation: some empirical evidence," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 135-155, October.
    25. Sudipto Bhattacharya, 1979. "Imperfect Information, Dividend Policy, and "The Bird in the Hand" Fallacy," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 259-270, Spring.
    26. Sheng Yao & Yadan Liu, 2020. "Air Quality Uncertainty and Earnings Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-19, July.
    27. Ding, Xiaoya & Guo, Mengmeng & Yang, Tao, 2021. "Air pollution, local bias, and stock returns," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    28. Tao Huang & Fei Wu & Jin Yu & Bohui Zhang, 2015. "Political risk and dividend policy: Evidence from international political crises," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 46(5), pages 574-595, June.
    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. Chen, Wenchuan & Xiang, Yuhan & Liu, Jin & Zhu, Yilin, 2022. "Foreign investor and industrial pollution: Evidence from sulfur dioxide emission," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(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. Paul McGuinness & Kevin Lam & João Vieito, 2015. "Gender and other major board characteristics in China: Explaining corporate dividend policy and governance," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 989-1038, December.
    2. Hussein Abedi Shamsabadi & Byung-Seong Min & Richard Chung, 2016. "Corporate governance and dividend strategy: lessons from Australia," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 12(5), pages 583-610, October.
    3. Booth, Laurence & Zhou, Jun, 2017. "Dividend policy: A selective review of results from around the world," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 1-15.
    4. Nan Hu & Xingnan Xue & Ling Liu, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on financial reporting quality: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(3), pages 3609-3644, September.
    5. Yang, Zhenyi & Leng, Tiecheng & Pan, Luyao & Wang, Xiaoming, 2022. "Paying for pollution: Air quality and executive compensation," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    6. 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.
    7. Wu, Manhwa & Ni, Yensen & Huang, Paoyu, 2020. "Dividend payouts and family-controlled firms—The effect of culture on business," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 221-228.
    8. Hasan, Mostafa Monzur & Uddin, Mohammad Riaz, 2022. "Do intangibles matter for corporate policies? Evidence from organization capital and corporate payout choices," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    9. Nguyen, Truong-Giang, 2020. "Stock liquidity and dividend policy: Evidence from an imputation tax environment," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Su, Yuandong & Lu, Xinjie & Zeng, Qing & Huang, Dengshi, 2022. "Good air quality and stock market returns," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    11. Paul Tanyi & David B. Smith & Xiaoyan Cheng, 2021. "Does firm payout policy affect shareholders’ dissatisfaction with directors?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 279-320, July.
    12. Darren K. Hayunga & Clifford P. Stephens, 2009. "Dividend behaviour of US equity REITs," Journal of Property Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 105-123, September.
    13. Yang, Xia & Ma, Zhong, 2022. "Institutional investors’ corporate site visits and dividend payouts," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 697-716.
    14. 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.
    15. López-Iturriaga, Félix J. & Santana Martín, Domingo Javier, 2019. "The payout policy of politically connected firms: Tunnelling or reputation?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    16. Seyed Alireza Athari, 2022. "Does investor protection affect corporate dividend policy? Evidence from Asian markets," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 579-598, April.
    17. Hasan, Mostafa Monzur & Habib, Ahsan, 2020. "Social capital and payout policies," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    18. Qurat Ul Ain & Xianghui Yuan & Hafiz Mustansar Javaid & Jinkai Zhao & Li Xiang, 2021. "Board Gender Diversity and Dividend Policy in Chinese Listed Firms," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440219, February.
    19. Iwaki, Hiromichi & Saito, Junyu, 2022. "Does rollover risk matter to payout policies? Evidence from Japanese listed firms," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    20. Zijian Cheng & Charles P. Cullinan & Zhangxin (Frank) Liu & Junrui Zhang, 2021. "Cross‐listings and dividend size and stability: evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(1), pages 415-465, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dividend policy; Air pollution; Air quality index (AQI);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G35 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Payout Policy
    • Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:finlet:v:49:y:2022:i:c:s154461232200383x. 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/frl .

    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.