Supply Chain Network Centrality and Corporate Carbon Information Disclosure: Perspectives from Internal Innovation and External Supervision

Carbon Information Disclosure (CID) has emerged as an essential tool for achieving global sustainable development. While existing literature has extensively examined firm-level and institutional drivers of CID, the impact of supply chain network structure remains underexplored, particularly in developing economies. To bridge this gap, this study investigates the impact of supply chain network centrality on CID using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2023. Our empirical results reveal a negative relationship between centrality and CID, suggesting that central firms tend to reduce carbon information disclosure levels to avoid proprietary costs, rather than signaling their environmental legitimacy. Mechanism analysis indicates that centrality inhibits CID through two suggested pathways: by crowding out green technology innovation and by reducing the participation of green investors. However, we find that strong external supervision, such as government environmental attention and media attention, can effectively weaken this inhibitory effect. This effect is also mitigated when firms are subject to heightened regulatory monitoring through China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme pilot. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that this negative impact is more pronounced in non-heavily polluting sectors where regulatory constraints are softer, while market concentration does not yield a significant heterogeneous impact.