The influence of political connection on environmental investment: evidence from China tourism-related listed companies

ABSTRACT

The survival of the tourism industry is closely linked to the environment, but the rapid development of the tourism industry has led to greater pressure on the ecological environment. China's tourism development has been under the influence of government-led strategy and it is more closely connected with the government and has a greater impact on the environmental investment decisions of tourism enterprises. Based on rent-seeking theories and externality theories, tourism-related listed companies in China are selected as empirical research samples to study the relationship between political connection and environmental protection investment of tourism-related listed companies. The results show that the degree of political connection of listed companies involved in tourism has a significant negative influence on environmental protection investment. This study enriches the related contents of political connection and environmental protection investment in theory, and also provides practical significance in the environmental protection investment of tourism-related listed companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental investment
• political connection
• internal control
• property rights
• tourism-related listed companies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).