The research of environmental accounting has experienced more than 30 years of ups and downs, and under the framework of maximization model under the guidance of decision-making usefulness and political economy analysis, two vertical threads and three horizontal discussions have been formed. Based on the theoretical framework of social wealth maximization, this paper discusses the objectives of environmental accounting at different levels and stages. At the same time, it points out three main forms of economic consequences in the process of perfecting environmental accounting, and the importance of green economic consequences cycle to environmental accounting construction.
Since 1950s, with the rapid development of global economy, resources have been rapidly exhausted and environmental pollution has become increasingly serious. Especially in the 1980s, environmental problems rose from regional issues to global issues, and the "green revolution" gradually penetrated into all fields of society. Some people claim that "accounting is closely related to environmental damage" and "no company has ever made sustainable profits". It is very outdated to strictly separate philosophical issues (such as sustainable development, intergenerational equity and environmental protection) from secular enterprises that specialize in how to explain these issues. Nowadays, the requirement of accounting responsibility has gone beyond the scope of interpersonal relationship and contractual relationship, and extended to the level of social relations. Since financial accounting is the cornerstone to reflect and supervise these relationships, it must play a certain role in the middle (Daniel B Thornton, 1993).
I. Literature review
Since the mid-1970s, the exploration of environmental accounting has experienced ups and downs for more than 30 years (Parker, 1986). From voluntary disclosure by the company to mandatory reporting by third-party institutions; From the appendix to the annual report to various forms of independent reports; From financial report to non-financial report, its content seems to be all-encompassing (Gray, Kouky &; Lavers, 1995), but it is always faced with an embarrassing situation: the attempts of practical circles are not based on many important deterministic characteristics of traditional accounting (Gray, 2000); The theoretical research also failed to form a coherent logical context (Ullmann, 1985).
As Gray and others later reiterated repeatedly, the four related characteristics that the traditional accounting recognition object should contain: accounting subject, economic matters, financial terms and service decision-making users, show considerable deviation in at least three aspects when it comes to environmental accounting issues: first, environmental accounting pays attention to social and environmental matters, rather than simple economic matters; Second, environmental accounting widely uses nonstandard financial language; Third, information users other than investors in the securities market become the main service targets of environmental accounting statements.
Therefore, when dealing with the relationship between environmental accounting and traditional accounting and defining the caliber of environmental accounting, the theoretical circle basically formed two ideas: First, under the same assumptions and conceptual framework, environmental accounting is regarded as a supplement to traditional accounting, hoping to be integrated with many existing mainstream accounting research, and investors in the securities market are persistently regarded as the main users of environmental information, but their social effects are limited (Gray et al.,1987; Matthew, 1984, 1993). Second, social and environmental accounting reports are regarded as the main form of information exchange between enterprises and society (Preston, 1975, 198 1, 1983. However, due to its extensive contents and various disclosure methods, it is often regarded as vague and unreliable by traditional accountants (Puxty, 1986, 199 1).
According to this context, it has long been considered that there is a lack of substantive and systematic conclusions (Mathews, 1987,1993; Mintzberg, 1983) can be roughly summarized in at least two theoretical frameworks: the view of decision-making usefulness with relatively concentrated research scope and the exploration from the perspective of political economy with wider concern.
According to the view of decision usefulness, the ultimate way to test the usefulness of environmental accounting report information is to pay attention to its influence on investors' decision (Dierkes &; Antal, 1985) constitutes the main research idea now (Gray et al., 1995). Belkaoui( 1984) and others studied the importance of all kinds of information fed back by users of traditional accounting statements through an orderly questionnaire survey, and thought that the disclosure of environmental accounting was of "medium" importance. At the same time, there are also quite rich achievements in the research on the influence of environmental information on stock price behavior (Aupperle,1984; Berkaoui,1980; Bowman, 1973), but failed to form a consistent conclusion.
In addition, Gray et al. (1995) initiated the theoretical analysis framework of political economy, and formed two branches: stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory. He believes that political economy, as a discipline (Zald, 1970, p.233) that studies the interaction among various interests, target manipulators and special exchange mechanisms, not only pays attention to the information behavior of market transactions, but also is used to analyze the transaction performance under various non-market contract modes. It is convenient to clarify the mediation, revision and transformation of the relationship between diversified interest groups, and provides an analytical basis for the explanation of environmental accounting by shareholder theory and legitimacy theory.
Shareholder theory puts shareholders in the leading position of environmental accounting reports, and holds that management must cater to and meet the needs of shareholders if it wants to seek sustainable success (Ullmann,1985; Roberts, R.W., 1992). The stronger the shareholder control, the more adjustments the enterprise will make because of the shareholder's intention, which determines the content and degree of disclosure of environmental accounting. In this sense, environmental accounting can be regarded as a bargaining dialogue between shareholders and companies (Roberts, R.W., 1992).
The legitimacy theory is different. It holds that management should consider two aspects when formulating company policies: first, basic environmental measurement; The second is the environmental disclosure policy. Although their goals are the same, and they both seek the legalization of corporate activities (Gray et al, 1995), their caliber may be different. Therefore, the premise of legitimacy theory came into being. When the perceived enterprise value of the public is inconsistent with the actual enterprise value, the management will take a more active way to change and guide the public and finally unify it.
According to the types of differences between perceived enterprise value and actual enterprise value, Linde blom summed up four strategies for management to seek legitimacy: first, when the value difference stems from the poor performance of the company, the company will try to educate and inform the relevant public about the substantial changes in the enterprise behavior that caused the value difference; Second, when the value difference stems from the public's misunderstanding of enterprise behavior, the enterprise only needs to try to change the relevant public's cognition of enterprise behavior without adjusting its own behavior; Third, enterprises also have the motivation to manipulate public cognition, thus shifting the focus and covering up the adverse effects; Fourth, when enterprises think that the relevant public has unrealistic or incorrect expectations of the responsibilities that enterprises should bear, they will tend to correct such expectations.
To sum up, it is not difficult to find that the particularity of environmental accounting has led to the formation of two contexts in its research as a whole, forming two systems: decision usefulness and political and economic research, which are discussed from a vertical perspective respectively. Horizontally, the problem is nothing more than extending from the traditional discussion on maximizing shareholders' wealth to maximizing management wealth and social wealth.
From beginning to end, the concept of decision usefulness has not given up its insistence on the traditional accounting object, which makes the theory based on the narrow sense of shareholder wealth maximization (SWM). Obviously, the legitimacy theory has the same starting point as the management wealth maximization (MWM) model. Findlay and Whitemore expressed their premise that management will reflect the most beneficial company performance by manipulating or avoiding measures within the scope of full disclosure. In addition, the social wealth maximization model has been widely used in environmental accounting practice, which is different from the previous small-scale and deterministic models. It introduces the concept of social account, which has been silent for a long time, and emphasizes that enterprises do not exist in a vacuum, on the contrary, they are part of social operation (Jaggi &: Zhao, 1996). Ramanathan( 1976) interprets this interdependent relationship as a social contract among organizations, society and a wider range of stakeholders. Enterprises operate in the way of maximizing social wealth, and obtain legal status related to society from it. Social contracts can be assumed to be implicit, and various social laws may make specific contracts more explicit. Through these implicit or explicit laws, the society has stipulated the rules of accounting responsibility for organizations, and also expanded the scope of company shareholders. The state, government and lobbying organizations have played a vital role in formulating these laws and explaining the rules of the game. Even with the recognition of Bruyn's social investment theory, a wider community of interests, including the natural environment itself and the interests of the next generation, has been unified. Among them, social investors who play a connecting role believe that social value and economic value can be maximized at the same time.
Shareholder theory has made a useful attempt in this respect. Recognizing the leading role of various shareholder groups in enterprise environmental accounting decision-making, shareholder theory can be attributed to the category of social wealth maximization model in a sense, but inevitably its research object still has limitations, which leads to its being only a part of social wealth maximization model. More importantly, it ignores the differences in environmental accounting requirements of stakeholders at different levels in the discussion, and lacks the staged discussion on the green process. Therefore, under the framework of social wealth maximization model, the author will start with the discussion of environmental accounting objectives, emphasize the nature, level and stage of environmental accounting objectives, and then lead to the application of economic consequence theory in the field of environmental accounting.
Second, a new understanding of environmental accounting objectives
Generally speaking, accounting goal refers to the starting point and destination of accounting system operation, which is manifested as expected goal, which depends on the nature of accounting and the objective environment it faces. The most intuitive understanding of the theoretical basis of environmental accounting objectives is nothing more than the process of combining sustainability theory with accounting theory. This combination is not only the coincidence of external forms, but also the connection of internal logic. It not only includes the choice of scope, but also depends on the correspondence of levels; It is not only a problem in space, but also a category in time.
The concept of sustainability originated from forestry engineering and was later widely used in other fields. Generally speaking, sustainability means that society cannot use more natural resources than the natural environment may produce (Gray,1996: 61; Bebinton, 1997). The definition of sustainable development is to meet the needs of contemporary people without sacrificing the ability of the next generation to meet their own needs. This theory contains a premise that the basic needs of the next generation of poor people in the world should be given priority (Welford &; Couldson, 1993), at the same time, we should take into account the restrictive role of technical level and social organizations in meeting the needs of the contemporary and next generation. Because of the different recognition of this premise, the theory of sustainability can be further divided into two main levels-strong sustainability and weak sustainability. Weak sustainability means that as long as a group can compensate for human losses (skills, knowledge and technology) and artificial capital (buildings, machinery and equipment), it can exhaust natural resources and degrade the natural environment. From this perspective, natural capital and artificial capital are treated equally. If artificial capital can be replaced and enterprises can rationalize the sustainable utilization of non-renewable resources, then weak sustainability will be more beneficial to a single enterprise. However, there is considerable uncertainty about the possibility of mutual substitution between natural resources and man-made resources. This uncertainty is not only manifested in the technical level, but also in the technology itself. For example, the debate on the non-economy of many split reactors has never stopped (common, 1995: 45-46). Therefore, based on irreplaceability, irreversibility, fairness and difference, we should pay enough attention to the protection of non-renewable natural resources with strong sustainability (Beder, 1996: 159-60). However, no matter which of the above two viewpoints becomes the theoretical guidance of environmental accounting, the ultimate goal of sustainable development will not change, which is to build and develop a sustainable society that can exist for countless generations (Meadows, 1992: 250).
Therefore, the core goal of environmental accounting can be expressed as measuring, publishing and reporting the changes of stakeholders from sustainable development to sustainable society. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, sustainable development includes actively pursuing economic wealth, environmental quality and social equity (Elkington, 1999: 18). Therefore, enterprises need to explain this process from the perspective of social, economic and ecological "bottom line". As Atkinson said, companies seeking sustainable development should not only pay attention to a single financial bottom line, but also strive to achieve a three-dimensional bottom line. However, inevitably, the process of integrating sustainable development into the government concept is slow, and the process of integrating sustainable development into the company leadership is often ignored. Although organizations are encouraged to pay attention to the "three-dimensional bottom line"-social impact, economic impact and environmental impact (Elkington,1998; 1999:18)-but the financial bottom line still affects the thinking of enterprises and is still the main driving force of enterprise action today (Ditz et al., 1995: 6). This forces people to start looking for more feasible business objectives for many enterprises at this stage. Different from the concept of sustainable development, economic-ecological benefits have been recognized as an appropriate goal by the top management of the company (see OECD,1998b; ; Schmidt Henny, 1992). The definition of sustainable development enterprise committee (BCSD) is that enterprises can provide goods and services with competitive advantages in value, meet human needs and ensure the quality of life, and at the same time gradually reduce the ecological impact and resource intensity to at least the estimated level of the earth's carrying capacity in the whole life cycle. Obviously, ignoring the social dimension factors for the time being, paying attention to the economic-ecological benefits, and paying more attention to the direct influencing factors that are relatively easy to measure. This choice is not to deny the goal of sustainable development, on the contrary, the measurement of economic-ecological benefit information can be used as the basis of company measurement and strong sustainable development. This economic-ecological benefit goal ignores the social performance of the company, which is not widely defined like sustainable development. It represents the first practical step to achieve "strong sustainable development".
At the same time, the goal of economic-ecological benefits does not interfere with the basic macro and micro requirements of environmental accounting objectives. On the contrary, it helps to simplify and clarify the internal logical relationship between accounting activities that reflect economic information and the comprehensive goal of sustainable development. A logical chain can be used to comprehensively describe the infiltration of environmental accounting in sustainable development from the original three-dimensional perspective and macro-micro level: the sustainable development of human society->; Coordinated development of economy, society, population and resources->; Its foundation lies in-> the degree of development and utilization of natural resources; Rational development and utilization of resources, serving mankind->; Need a good ecological cycle as the foundation-> Good economic cycle is the guarantee of ecological cycle-> The main links of economic cycle are investment, production, use, consumption, recovery, compensation and distribution->; There are both economic and logical connections between these connections->; The goal of economic cycle is-> to achieve good economic and ecological benefits; It needs a complete accounting and management system as the foundation and guarantee. Now, the introduction of economic-ecological benefit goal to reorganize this logic only highlights the two parts of ecological cycle and economic cycle, and promotes the three sets of logical relations between ecological cycle itself, economic cycle itself and ecology and economic cycle. At the same time, it also echoes the above discussion about the role of environmental accounting in the macro field of social accounting, and provides a smooth and in-depth interface. During the period of 1983, the World Bank actively encouraged the revision of the current accounting system, increased environmental projects, and established environmental auxiliary accounts matching the United Nations national accounting system. 1989, the government of China revised "China Agenda 2 1 century-21century China White Paper on Population, Environment and Development", trying to bring environmental factors into the accounting system, so that the national economic accounting indicators can truly reflect the growth rate of the national economy. Judging from the development process of environmental accounting in this early stage, the two-dimensional measurement of ecology and economy is the focus and urgent consideration of social economic accounting and social index accounting at this stage.
In addition, in the process of introducing the current economic-ecological benefit target, it is necessary to further clarify the relationship between economic benefits and ecological benefits within the target. This involves clarifying the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable growth. It is purely a recent phenomenon to regard sustainable development as sustainable growth (Sachs, 1992). In fact, if a company is regarded as a social system, its survival is also the result of economic performance. Sustainable development forces environmental organizations, enterprises and governments to admit that environmental factors may have long-term adverse effects on economic performance, but these factors have not been paid enough attention in the past. But "development" has more meanings than "growth", because "development" defines social function but does not exclude the "continuous decline" of economic productivity (Maunders and Burritt, 199 1: 9). Therefore, if the social benefits of sustainable development are ignored, the environmental accounting goal based on economic-ecological benefits actually implies and recognizes the assumption that the economic benefits and ecological benefits of enterprises are "either-or". That is to say, unless enterprises can follow the strong and sustainable improvement of economic-ecological benefits and strive to realize the "no regrets strategy" advocated by companies and government agencies, they can achieve "win-win" (wally &: Whitehead, 1994), otherwise one of the economic and ecological stakeholders will make concessions.
Third, the economic consequences of environmental accounting
"Economic consequences" is a theory to discuss the advance and retreat of all stakeholders, which arose in the 1970s. It focuses on the influence of accounting reports on the decision-making behavior of stakeholders such as enterprises, governments, trade unions, investors and creditors. The consequences of the actions of these individuals or groups are considered to affect the interests of other groups. Therefore, the theory holds that accounting standards makers should take into account the adverse consequences announced by them when deciding accounting problems.
Looking back at the starting point of economic consequence theory and environmental accounting research, it seems that there is an amazing coincidence between them in time. Before the 1960s, financial publications rarely involved in accounting disputes. It is generally believed that accounting is a constant, if not a fixed parameter, in the operation and management of enterprises. In the 1970s, 10 was obviously a year when American society insisted that the system should be responsible for its social, environmental and economic consequences, and the stakeholders in accounting standard-setting activities also knew this clear public tendency (Stephen, 1978). It can be considered that it is this opportunity that accelerates the participation of many followers of environmental information, including lobbying organizations and environmental protection agencies, in the standardization of environmental accounting system. On the other hand, it can also be considered that the huge space and uncertainty in the formulation and disclosure of environmental accounting standards, as well as the increasingly fierce conflicts of interest involved, have attracted potential interest grabbers. These external groups have intervened in the formulation of standards by adopting standards that go beyond traditional accounting measurement and fair disclosure. Their concern for economic consequences far exceeds their concern for environmental accounting announcements.
Therefore, when the theory of economic consequences goes deep into the field of environmental accounting, the interaction between them will be inevitable. The hypothesis of neutral effect in accounting policy formulation can only be an ideal expectation, and the most active way of environmental accounting is to achieve an acceptable balance of interests under the guidance of business objectives. In this sense, the economic consequences of environmental accounting are not only a dynamic balancing process in the process of formulating standards, but also a static result of imperfect environmental information disclosure, and a new round of economic consequences cycle triggered by these medium-term attempts.
As an important non-renewable resource, oil and natural gas, as representatives of environmental factors, were formally introduced into accounting standards for the first time. The formulation process of this standard has attracted the special attention of all stakeholders, and the controversy of its accounting method has also been widely influenced by the theory of economic consequences. For more than 20 years since the 1960s, the focus of debate has been the choice of accounting methods for exploration costs in the oil and gas industry. The absorption cost method (absorption costing) and the successful effort method have their own advantages and disadvantages, but no consensus has been reached. Among them, the absorption cost method holds that all costs (except some exceptions) spent on discovering reserves should be capitalized, including unsuccessful drilling costs, that is, the cost of dry wells should be included in the costs of all successfully explored oil wells in production and operation. However, the law of success cost is different. It believes that it is difficult to regard dry wells as an asset. Therefore, it is only necessary to capitalize the cost of successfully explored oil wells and expensize the cost of dry wells. Obviously, the oil and gas costs recorded by these two methods are quite different. In the past, the discussion on economic consequences mainly focused on the concerns of small oil and gas companies that independently explored. Together, they used their considerable political influence to successfully persuade the Accounting Principles Committee to postpone the consideration of this sensitive issue.
However, as an attempt of environmental accounting, there are actually other green stakeholders in the formulation of standards. Although their influence is not strong enough to compete with the main interest groups in oil and gas companies to completely affect the results of standard setting, their existence at least represents another different voice in the economic consequences. To a great extent, the choice of accounting methods represents the tendency of green stakeholders to support other industries such as oil and gas industry and clean alternative energy, which stems from their concern for intergenerational interests. Not only that, this tendency will also transmit a positive or negative incentive, including capital and technology forms, inside and outside the industry. Successful cost method often produces less net income than absorption costing. If the successful cost method is widely used in the industry, it can be considered as a policy support for new energy and an urgent compensation attitude for the ecological cycle. The same is true within the industry, especially for small companies actively engaged in exploration. The reported low net income makes it difficult for them to raise funds, thus promoting the flow of funds to large companies with relatively strong overall environmental awareness and relatively perfect environmental protection measures. Therefore, if the green stakeholders have enough influence, the choice of environmental information accounting methods will determine the competitive position and prospects of an industry and its internal forces to a certain extent.
In addition, the economic consequences of environmental accounting are also reflected in voluntary or spontaneous implementation of environmental accounting objectives and disclosure of environmental information in current practice. Although there are many ways to discuss the disclosure of environmental information, before a unified standard is formed, the practical circles have begun to judge according to their own needs and make various attempts outside the standard. The following table is Gray's comprehensive induction based on the close relationship between stakeholders and enterprises. It is particularly worth mentioning that the environmental disclosure provided by insiders to outsiders includes sustainable development reports, and the task of distinguishing moral investors is left to the discloser and outsiders who need relevant information to decide. All these indicate that enterprises regard the choice of environmental information as an art to deal with the relationship between morality and interests. Any decision made by the management on whether to disclose environmental information will show its tendency after fully studying the relevant needs and possible consequences, and the final approach will be considered to be more beneficial than harmful.
table
Environmental information users and environmental information journalists
Internal personnel, external personnel
Internal personnel environmental factors affect data
Environmental management system
Shareholder test
Definition of social responsibility
Goal and value correction
Report of Supervisor of Reputation Management Information Association
External supplier information
Environmental consultant
Social responsibility account management
Market and shareholder survey
Image cognitive feedback
Regular disclosure in external personnel's annual report
Silent social account settlement
Independent environmental report
Sustainable development report
Alliance partner information
Expression of value orientation
Shareholder education
Non-profit organization environmental report external environmental disclosure
Moral investment
Consumer survey
Lobbying organization report
Environmental protection organization information
Media reflection
Competitors participate in disclosure.
Union report
In fact, similar to the various attempts made by the practical circles in the above table, whether or not they directly participate in the expansion of communication methods with interested third parties by the Financial Standards Committee (mainly including widely distributing draft for comments, holding symposiums and hearings, etc.). ) will eventually be included in the consideration of future standard setters. Environmental disclosure can be vividly understood as a multi-dimensional vector (Wu Shuipeng et al., 2002), which includes information content, organizational form, information redundancy, information credibility, the explanation of the discloser, disclosure media and disclosure opportunity. Its value and scope will depend on the past vector and the constraints of financial accounting framework.
The Financial Accounting Standards Committee published its famous "information spectrogram" in 1984. The figure summarizes the existing and future financial accounting contents into five disclosure levels. The range from small to large is: first, the scope of financial statements, confirmation and measurement, and concept announcement, including financial statements, income and comprehensive income statements, cash flow statements and owners' investment and distribution statements; The second is the notes (and endnotes) to the financial statements, including accounting policies, contingencies, inventory methods, the number of tradable shares, and alternative measurement (market value of projects based on historical costs); Third, supplementary information, including the disclosure of price changes (amendment to Announcement No.33 of the Financial Accounting Standards Board); Fourth, other methods of financial reporting, including management discussion and analysis, letters to shareholders, etc. Fifth, other information, including discussions about competition and undelivered orders, analyst reports, economic statistics and new papers about the company. According to the requirements of the securities and exchange commission format 10-K (securities and exchange commission rule S-K). On the whole, the first two parts constitute the basic accounting report, and after the third part is added, it forms a field directly affected by the current standards of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. After being included in the fourth level, it is the scope of financial report referred to in the concept announcement 1, and the report containing other information meets the needs of the social wealth maximization model and covers the useful information needed by all stakeholders, including investors, creditors and "relevant decision makers".
Obviously, it is encouraging to use spectrogram as the planning framework of environmental vector. It can not only serve as the end point of the subsequent economic consequences of environmental accounting, but also summarize the direct or indirect theoretical and practical achievements in the previous period and predict the starting point of a new round of economic consequences cycle. As many people have noticed, in the United States, the law and the general concern for social performance have created the need for environmental risk tracking. 1989, the securities and exchange commission asked the company to disclose any potential environmental governance obligations that the organization may face according to the federal super fund law, so the company annual report of 1990 began the disclosure procedure. 10-K was added to the document according to the requirements of state and federal environmental agencies, and its disclosure led to the creation of a database, which provided information about companies specializing in environmental risk tracking. For example, Ersite in Denver, environmental audit companies in Lyon and Pennsylvania, Environmental Risk Information Center in Alexandria, Virginia, Littleton Petroleum Information Company in Colorado, Toxicheck Siczek in Birmingham and Michigan, Landscape Environmental Information Company in Diego, Nangang Environmental Data Resources Company in Connecticut, etc. This new industry provides a picture of the future characterized by relevant shareholders. They not only care about the company's social performance, but also care about more accurate and reliable information related to the environmental risks of American companies, thus greatly increasing the strength of green stakeholders and promoting the development of environmental accounting into a virtuous circle.
To sum up, it is not difficult to find that the economic consequences of environmental accounting are not a single concept of static or dynamic game, but will involve a series of economic consequences cycles that are directly or indirectly involved. What theoretical and practical circles urgently need to do now is to promote such a virtuous circle of green economy and economic consequences, thus expanding the team of green stakeholders and cultivating suitable soil for the gradual improvement of environmental accounting.