The impact of carbon information disclosure quality on the financial performance based on UNC combination weight and FA: evidence from public companies in China's electric power industry

As a significant carbon emitter, China has set a target in 2020 of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." This target presents stricter criteria for the company's carbon information disclosure quality (CIDQ). Meantime, financial performance (FP) is a primary consideration for companies and their stakeholders. Therefore, this paper selected public companies in the electric power industry (EPI), which are the first to be integrated into the carbon emissions trading market, to research the impact of CIDQ on FP. Theoretically, this paper enhances the conclusions regarding the impact of CIDQ on FP, which might serve as a reference for future research, and practically, this paper can reduce management resistance to carbon information disclosure in pursuing profit, facilitate the co-improvement of CIDQ and FP, contribute in achieving China's target of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality." First, this paper constructed a CIDQ evaluation index system by analyzing the characteristics of diverse sub-sectors within the EPI, which can make the CIDQ evaluation system more rational, and then evaluated it using a comprehensive evaluation method based on uncertain normal cloud (UNC) combination weight, which can reflect the ambiguity and uncertainty of the information obtained during the process of evaluating the company's CIDQ, and broaden the thought process for evaluating the CIDQ. Furthermore, the paper used factor analysis (FA) to evaluate FP, effectively resolving the issue of massive data while preserving the essential information of financial indicators. Finally, the paper concluded by analyzing the impact of the CIDQ on FP using a multiple linear regression model. The results indicated that the CIDQ by electric public companies has a positive impact on solvency and profitability, a negative impact on operating capacity, and a non-significant impact on development capacity. In response to these conclusions, this paper proposed corresponding suggestions at the government, society, and company levels.