Mandatory environmental disclosure and corporate debt maturity: causal evidence from China

Mandatory environmental disclosure has become a central regulatory instrument for improving corporate transparency, yet its consequences for the structure rather than the cost of corporate financing remain insufficiently understood. Because debt maturity mismatch is a persistent structural impediment to long-term investment in bank-dominated economies, clarifying how disclosure mandates reshape the term structure of corporate debt matters for firms, creditors, and regulators alike. This study uses the 2010 Guidelines for Environmental Information Disclosure by Listed Companies as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a difference-in-differences approach to identify the causal effect of mandatory environmental disclosure on corporate debt maturity. Based on panel data for A-share listed companies in China from 2007 to 2019, the results show that mandatory disclosure significantly shortens debt maturity through a risk revelation mechanism (H1 supported). Pre-policy voluntary disclosure quality acts as a substantial moderator: high-quality prior disclosure attenuates the maturity-shortening effect by approximately 48% (H2 supported). Subgroup analysis by bank dependence reveals the simultaneous operation of supply-side creditor tightening and demand-side managerial adjustment. Mechanism tests show that mandatory disclosure brings previously unobservable environmental compliance costs and liabilities into the public domain, prompting creditors to reassess and reprice environmental risk, thereby reducing debt maturity. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the effect is concentrated among non-state-owned enterprises and firms in regions with stronger environmental governance. This study contributes to the literature on the financial consequences of mandatory disclosure by extending its scope beyond financing cost to financing structure.