Unveiling the Relationship between Academic Independent Directors and Corporate Environmental Performance

This paper examines the relationship between academic independent directors and corporate environmental performance. In the baseline regression, we employ the ordinary least squares (OLS) model and find that academic independent directors significantly promote corporate environmental performance. We further conduct a battery of robustness tests to verify the reliability of our findings. Specifically, we first adopt the average distance from listed firms to Project 985 universities as the instrumental variable, and use the treatment effect model and endogenous switching regression model to address potential endogeneity issues. We then re-estimate our baseline results by replacing core variables, excluding special samples, adjusting the clustering standard errors, and all robustness test findings are consistent with the baseline conclusion.
Furthermore, mechanism test results reveal that academic independent directors improve corporate environmental performance by strengthening corporate environmental awareness, alleviating managerial myopia, and boosting green innovation. In the extended analysis, we explore other potential impacts of academic independent directors on firms, which further validates our theoretical framework and baseline findings. Finally, we perform heterogeneity analyses based on stakeholder capacity differences, managerial green cognition, and professional backgrounds of academic independent directors. The results show that stakeholder capacity differences substitute for the governance effectiveness of academic independent directors; the positive impact of academic independent directors on corporate environmental performance is stronger when managers hold green cognition, and academic independent directors with relevant professional backgrounds exhibit a more pronounced improvement effect.

These findings provide new implications for clarifying the relationship between academic independent directors and corporate environmental governance, and affirming the vital role of academic independent directors in corporate governance.