Do Industry Peers across and within Regions Affect Corporate Environmental Responsibility? Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

In the context of China's development of modern environmental governance systems, it is crucial to recognise the vital role played by businesses. The internal impetus for environmental governance will be generated by accelerating the emergence of a universal industry trend of enterprises proactively fulfilling their environmental responsibilities. Therefore, this study utilises listed A-share companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2020 as samples to investigate the peer impacts of corporate environmental responsibility (CER). It was discovered that industry peers across and within regions might influence CER. When companies meet their environmental duties, the peer effects of CER may be seen as convergent responsiveness to external pressure. In a cross-regional context, the combination of industry competitive pressure and severe environmental uncertainty may greatly amplify the peer implications of CER, and small businesses are more susceptible to convergence. In an intra-regional scenario, environmental regulatory pressure has dramatically diminished the peer effects of CER, and the high-level marketisation process ensures that environmental regulatory pressure will favour the independent fulfilment of CER. Moreover, this phenomenon is magnified in state-owned enterprises.