Learning to be green: Accounting comparability and environmental violations
研究发现会计可比性帮助企业从同行学习环境实践，从而减少自身环境违规，尤其当同行披露低毒排放时效果更显著。
Over recent years there has been an increasing awareness of the costs to the environment of corporate actions. We posit that accounting comparability between a firm and its peers, facilitates firm learning of the impact peer firm activities have on the environment. This learning allows the firm to reduce its own environmental violations. In line with this conjecture, our findings show that accounting comparability is negatively associated with environmental violations. Further, the reduction in firm environmental violations is larger in the presence of comparable peer firms disclosing low toxic releases, suggesting that firms are better able to learn from peer firms with low environmental impact. Our results provide novel evidence that accounting comparability facilitates green learning and therefore benefits society at large by reducing environmental harm.