Air Pollution and Media Slant: Evidence from Chinese Corporate News.

DOI

10.1080/1540496X.2021.2013196

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of air pollution on the media slant of publicly listed firms in China. Using a large panel of air quality and media data at the city level, we find that lower air quality generally leads to a more negative media slant. When the air quality falls from lightly polluted to heavily polluted, the number of negative sentences in a news article increases by about 1%. Our subsample analysis shows that the effect of air pollution on media slant is similar for news articles covering large and small firms, SOE and non-SOE firms and for official and non-official newspaper articles. Furthermore, the effect of air pollution on media slant is stronger for firms in heavy polluting industries. These results suggest that air pollution affects media slant.

Document Type

Restricted Article: Campus only access

Publication Date

12-16-2021

Publisher Statement

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2021.2013196

The definitive version is available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1540496X.2021.2013196

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