Institutional Investors’ Green Attention and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure: Evidence from Site Visits

Institutional investors play an increasingly important role in promoting corporate environmental governance and green transformation. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2012 to 2023, this study examines how institutional investors’ green attention influences the quality of corporate environmental information disclosure. Leveraging mandatory disclosures of institutional investor site visits, we construct a text-based measure of investor green attention. The results show that higher institutional investor green attention significantly improves firms’ environmental information disclosure quality, primarily by promoting managerial long-term orientation and increasing firms’ environmental investment. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the effect is stronger among firms with higher executive green awareness, weaker internal governance structures, more stable institutional investor ownership, and in regions with lower levels of marketization and government environmental attention. Environmental information disclosure is linked to enhanced green innovation, higher firm valuation, and lower cost of capital. Furthermore, institutional investors’ green attention toward upstream suppliers generates a positive spillover effect on downstream firms’ environmental disclosure. Overall, our findings highlight the governance role of institutional investors in enhancing environmental information disclosure.