FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ANXIETY SENSITIVITY, PAY ATTENTION TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL COST AND ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE IN POLLUTING INDUSTRIES
Authors: Guo Lingling , Shi Wei 
Published: July 2022

Abstract

Background
Nowadays, environmental problems are becoming more and more serious. Heavy polluting enterprises are the source of pollution, and their environmental behavior has always been the focus of attention. However, the relationship between environmental cost (EC) and corporate performance (EP) is not clear, which may hinder enterprises from fulfilling environmental social responsibility. This does not meet the requirements of green development. Therefore, it is very important to explore it. To explore the relationship between environmental costs and corporate performance, it would be a good choice to start from anxiety sensitivity.

Subjects and Methods
Considering the individual fixed effect and time fixed effect at the enterprise level, this paper uses the two-way fixed effect model for panel regression, and studies the relationship between EC and EP based on the panel data of A-share listed companies in coal, chemical and other heavily polluting industries from 2013 to 2019. EC data mainly comes from the annual report and social responsibility report of enterprises. Other data are from the official database and have been matched. We also use the tail reduction method to deal with outliers. According to the investment risk, the samples are also divided into different groups and analyzed. Beck Anxiety Inventory (BA) was used for employees in the pollution industry. It is a self-assessment scale with 21 items, which is equal to the Bai prepared by Aaron T. Beck in the United States in 1985. The scale adopts 4-level scoring, and its standard is “1””, which means none; “2” means mild without much annoyance; “3” means moderate, uncomfortable but tolerable; “4” means severe and can only be reluctantly tolerated. The total score is obtained by adding the rough scores of 21 items in the Bai scale. Bai is mainly used to assess the degree to which subjects are disturbed by a variety of anxiety symptoms.

Results
The results show that the coefficient of current EC investment in EP is positive, but not significant. However, EC with a lag of one year is significantly positive at the level of 1%. We found that the current coefficients of all samples were not significant. From the one-year lag coefficient, the lag coefficient of non-state-owned enterprises is greater than that of state-owned enterprises, both of which are significantly positive at the level of 1%. In addition, the central and western region group is significantly positive at the level of 1%, while the eastern region group is not significant. At the same time, the performance of large enterprise groups is positive, but not significant. In small-scale enterprise groups, this proportion is significantly positive at the level of 10%. At the same time, there is also a significant negative correlation between state-owned enterprises and enterprise efficacy. It is found that compared with EC investment, EP investment and enterprise efficacy are much higher. However, there was no significant difference in the level of anxiety between the two.

Conclusion
This study shows that the current EC investment has no significant impact on EP, but EC with a lag of one year can significantly promote EP. In terms of ownership, e-commerce of non-state-owned enterprises plays a greater role in promoting EP than that of state-owned enterprises. Compared with the eastern region, the situation in the central and western regions is also obvious. In terms of enterprise scale, e-commerce of small enterprises can promote the development of enterprises more effectively than that of large enterprises. Therefore, this paper can enrich the relevant contents of environmental accounting, provide suggestions for the government to formulate environmental policies, help enterprises avoid environmental risks and help stakeholders make relevant decisions. In addition, there are limitations in data processing, and we can further study the impact mechanism. Although there was a positive correlation between EC investment and EP, it was not statistically significant (P &gt; 0.05). Debilitating anxiety was dominant in enterprise anxiety, and the result was statistically significant (P &lt; 0.01). It means that enterprise anxiety can be used as an indicator of the impact of EC on EP. Our results show that there is a negative correlation between the central and western regions and the eastern region. The Pearson correlation in the high anxiety group was significantly higher than that in the low anxiety group.

Acknowledgements
Supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (20BGL085), and the program of Philosophy and social sciences in Henan province (2021BJJ066).