Mitigating the destructive outcome of negative environmental stock market behaviours on environmental health security in China

ABSTRACT

Environmental health security as a developmental goal is directly linked to environmental quality across the globe. China believes that maintaining an attractive, stable and profitable environmental stock market can provide the needed private sector support for national environmental protection initiatives. However, the environmental stock market in China is unstable relative to others, and highly susceptible to frequent and contemporaneous mass movement of investors to perceived safer stocks. This study analysed the degree to which environmental stock investors move away in herds in response to sporadic shocks on the Chinese stock market. Four robust econometric models are used analysed environmental stocks classified as the KGRM MSCI China IMI Environment 10/40 Index. The study shows endemic presence of herding behaviour among investors based on the results of three of the models. If this condition continues, it will negatively affect capital flow for environmental protection and affect environmental health security in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Stock market
• herding
• behaviour
• environmental
• health security

Acknowledgements

The support of Prof Zhou Lulin, Prof Xinglong Xu and the staff and students of the Center for Health and Public Policy Research at the Jiangsu University are highly appreciated. HAA: Conceived, designed and carried out the research with the support of trained assistants and experts who do not qualify as co-authors based on the requirements of the journal.

Disclosure statement

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

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71904066], the Social science application research project of Jiangsu Province [grant number 19SYB-095] and the Universities’ Philosophy and Social Science Researches in Jiangsu Province [grant number 2019SJA1884].