Beyond Mitigation: Adaptation-Oriented City Pilots and Corporate Climate Risk Disclosure in China

Abstract

This study examines whether adaptation-oriented local governance is associated with changes in corporate climate risk disclosure when firms face no direct reporting mandate. Using Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2023 and China’s Climate Adaptation City Pilot Program (CACPP), we find higher climate risk disclosure intensity in pilot locations after policy implementation. Because the full pre-treatment joint test rejects jointly zero leads, we interpret the DID evidence cautiously; the positive estimate remains under treated-group linear and linear-plus-quadratic trend specifications, reweighting, nonlinear outcome models, concurrent climate-policy controls, and alternative treatment definitions. Further evidence is consistent with an external information-demand channel. The statistically detectable increase is concentrated in transition-risk terms, while we do not detect a significant increase in the physical-risk measure. This pattern is consistent with a possible gap between the adaptation-oriented policy signal and the composition of measured reporting, but it does not imply that physical-risk disclosure or real resilience is unchanged. The findings therefore distinguish greater climate disclosure from the risk composition of that disclosure and highlight the importance of considering both disclosure intensity and risk category in climate reporting.