Supervisors: Anders Ryom Villadsen & Jakob Arnoldi
Discussants: Carsten Bergenholtz & Panos Mitkidis

Abstract
Business is often perceived as the major contributor to pollution (Dahlmann et al., 2019), which has led many researchers to study what factors shape their environmental performance.  Corporate ownership is one of the basic factors in organizational research, and it retains a sizable presence in studies on corporate environmental performance (CEP). State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are dominant actors in economies throughout the world, especially in China (OECD, 2017). Given the abundant and inconclusive empirical studies on the relationship between ownership and CEP in China, this study aims to examine 1) how existing studies approach state ownership’s effect on CEP, 2) whether state ownership brings advantages to CEP, and 3) provides avenues for future studies through systematic review.

The whole PhD project seeks to examine how institutional factors influence firms’ environmental behaviors. The second paper is an empirical study and will analyze how environmental regulations’ stringency affects firms’ relocation in China. The third paper will investigate institutional factor’s effect on firms’ environmental behaviors from an international perspective.

Everyone is welcome!