The Relationship between Environmental Information Disclosure and Profitability: A Comparison between Different Disclosure Styles

Combined with the existing research gap, this paper divides firms’ environmental information disclosure styles into two types: Substantive style and symbolic style. This paper elaborates on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and firms’ profitability of these two disclosure types and tests this relationship using the data from 676 firms employed from the heave-polluting industry. Considering the endogenous and heteroscedasticity problems, 2-stage least squares method and weighted least square method were adopted. The results showed that (1) positive relationships exist between environmental information disclosure and profitability for both types; and (2) the contribution of symbolic-style disclosure to profitability is larger than that of substantive-style disclosure. These findings are important for corporate managers and highlight some policy implications in developing countries.