From guerrilla warfare legacy to green transparency: The lasting impact of collectivism on corporate environmental disclosure

Can the historical legacies of collectivism explain regional disparities in corporate green transparency? We address this question by examining China’s guerrilla warfare base areas, where prolonged collective living during the wartime period instilled durable collectivist norms. Using panel data from all A-share listed firms (2008–2023), we find that firms headquartered in these historically collective areas exposure exhibit significantly higher corporate environmental disclosure. To uncover the mechanism, we apply dictionary based text analysis to 2.7 million posts on the “Message Board for Leaders” and document that guerrilla regions exhibit stronger contemporary collectivist language. The effect intensifies in cities with specialized environmental courts and among firms designated as key pollution monitoring unit. Our results remain robust to alternative proxies, firm fixed effects, matched samples, and spatial‑inference checks. This paper demonstrate the enduring role of wartime legacies in shaping corporate transparency and illustrate how informal cultural norms complement formal governance to advance sustainability in emerging economies.