Mortality salience and corporate environmental investment: evidence from Chinese heavily polluting listed firms

Terror management theory argues that mortality salience can engender greater prosocial behaviour. We extend this theory to corporate environmental practice. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in heavily polluting industries, the results of difference-in-differences model show that firms significantly increase their environmental investment after the top executives experience mortality salience triggered by their colleague death. Moreover, we further show that the core relationship is amplified in situations where the death is sudden and firm is located in areas with strong public environmental awareness.