Professor Yanan Wang, a researcher of the base, has published a collaborative paper titled "Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Corporate Environmental Engagement" in the Journal of Business Ethics.

The Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) is a high-level academic journal in the field of business ethics. It is recognized as one of the 50 global authoritative journals in management by the Financial Times of the UK (FT50 journals), and is also a JCR first-tier journal.

Abstract:

This study examines the impact of non-executive employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) on corporate environmental engagement. We show that granting ESOPs to non-executive employees promotes greater corporate ecological engagement from the perspectives of environmental protection expenditures, environmental information disclosure quality, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. ESOPs unite members in a common interest, empowering them to put pressure on management to reduce carbon emissions, which benefits their physical wellbeing and increases their residual interest in long-term corporate wealth. Further, our analysis reveals that companies investing in environmental protection forgo short-term profit as a consequence of high initial costs, while increasing long-term firm value. These positive effects are attributable to ESOP schemes with higher employee subscription rates, those granted to a larger number of non-executive employees, and those with longer validity periods of ownership, whose incentive effect is sufficiently powerful to offset the free-rider problem. In addition, the impact of ESOPs is more pronounced in companies with greater media exposure, those confronting intense labor market competition, and those in heavily polluting industries. Fundamentally, our study provides novel evidence of the incentive effect of ESOPs on corporate environmental engagement and of stakeholder dynamics driving the implementation of carbon reduction strategies.

Keywords：Employee incentives; Employee stock ownership plans; Corporate environmental engagement; Stakeholder theory; Agency theory; Climate change ethics

Link：https://dtf.zuel.edu.cn/upload/20240117/202401171636539458.pdf

Author profile

Yanan Wang is an associate professor at the School of Finance, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. Doctor of Finance, School of Economics, Fudan University, and doctoral student of WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. His research interests include corporate finance, contract theory and behavioral finance. Currently, he has presided over a youth project of the National Natural Science Foundation and participated in many projects of the National Natural Science Foundation and the National Social Science Foundation. The research results have been published in important domestic journals such as Economic Research Journal and Journal of Financial Research. And Journal of Corporate Finance, China Economic Review, Energy Economics, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Economic Modelling, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Finance Research Letters and other SSCI journals.