Environmental Regulation, Audit Mechanism and Corporate Financing Constraints

From the Perspective of Institutional Change based on the New Environmental Protection Law

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the overlapping "dual carbon" goals and high-quality development strategy, the collaborative governance of environmental regulation and audit supervision has become a key path to resolve the contradiction between "green transformation and financing predicament" of heavily polluting enterprises. This study takes A-share main board manufacturing listed enterprises from 2012 to 2019 as samples, and systematically explores the impact and internal transmission logic of environmental audit mechanisms on the financing constraints of heavily polluting enterprises during the mandatory institutional change of the new Environmental Protection Law by adopting difference-in-differences method and other approaches. This study provides new empirical evidence for in-depth exploration of the interrelationship between environmental supervision, auditing and corporate financing behavior, and also has practical guiding significance for realizing the coordination of high-quality economic development and ecological protection goals.