Can corporate environmental responsibility improve environmental performance? An inter-temporal analysis of Chinese chemical companies

The empirical research on the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility and environmental performance remains in the one-way positive impact and lacks the research on nonlinear relationship between them. Based on the stakeholder theory, this paper selects A-share chemical–listed companies in China from 2006 to 2017 as the research samples and uses generalized method of moments (GMM) model to investigate the impact mechanism between corporate environmental responsibility and environmental performance. The results showed that corporate environmental responsibility positively impacted on environmental performance; however, the impact was not significant. The corporate environmental performance positively and significantly impacted on environmental responsibility. Moreover, results reported that industry competition played a positive regulatory role in corporate environmental responsibility affecting environmental performance and has played a positive role in corporate environmental impact on environmental responsibility. A nonlinear relationship (inverted “U” shape) between environmental responsibility and environmental performance was found. The study results stress to establish a fair and perfect market competition mechanism to improve the environmental performance of chemical industries in China.