Board Group Faultlines, Slack Resource, and Corporate Carbon Performance

A general consensus has been reached among many countries that low-carbon development is important for the protection of the environment and the mitigation of climate change. In line with the attitude of a responsible country, China urges enterprises to participate in energy conservation and emission reduction through various policies. Based on the faultline theory, this paper considers the data of 124 listed companies in China’s manufacturing industry from 2015 to 2019 as a research sample. From the perspective of corporate governance, this analysis discusses the influence of the aggregation effect of the multiple characteristics of board members on the environmental protection benefits of enterprises, and empirically studies the board group. The relationship between the faultline and the carbon performance of the enterprise is further investigated, and the internal slack resources of the enterprise are further investigated in relation to the board members and the moderating effect. The study found that the existence of the board’s bio-demographic-related faultline has a positive effect on the carbon performance level of enterprises, but it is not statistically significant. The existence of the board’s task-related faultline has a positive effect on the carbon performance level of the enterprise. Further research found that precipitated slack resources have a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between the existence of boardroom faultlines and corporate carbon performance, and that the relationship had a positive moderating effect, but was not statistically significant. The preceding conclusions not only enrich the research on corporate internal governance in theory, but also provide useful guidance for how to improve corporate environmental protection behavior on a microlevel in practice.