IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v69y2025i1d10.1007_s00181-025-02741-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The power of informal institutions: evidence from the impact of religious culture on corporate green governance in China

Author

Listed:
  • Lan Yang

    (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)

  • Yangyang Wang

    (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)

  • Huayan Geng

    (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)

Abstract

Apart from formal environmental regulations, religious culture is considered a crucial element of informal regulations affecting corporate green governance (CGG) practices. Diverging from literature examining the association between local religious culture and CGG, our study employs a novel instrumental variable, i.e., the number of religious sites by city in the Qing dynasty. This allows for the exploration of the causal impact of religious culture on CGG, specifically pollutant discharge fees (PDF) and environmental information disclosure (EID), using 848 Chinese A-share listed firms across 14 polluting industries from 2009 to 2018. Our findings illustrate that local religious culture reduces corporate PDF and heightens EID by firms. Furthermore, mechanism analysis unveils that (1) religious culture enhances CGG by fostering corporate social responsibility (CSR) and public environmental awareness; (2) a significant substitution effect exists between religious culture and environmental regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Lan Yang & Yangyang Wang & Huayan Geng, 2025. "The power of informal institutions: evidence from the impact of religious culture on corporate green governance in China," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 69(1), pages 213-261, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:69:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00181-025-02741-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-025-02741-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-025-02741-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00181-025-02741-0?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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • Q59 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Other

    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:spr:empeco:v:69:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00181-025-02741-0. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.