The Future and Usefulness of Green Bonds
In this thesis, I investigate the future and usefulness of green bonds in China and across the globe. Green bonds are fixed-income instruments designed to raise capital for projects that will have a positive environmental impact. In the Introduction in Chapter 1, I briefly introduce green bonds. I then describe the layout of the rest of the thesis.
In Chapter 2, I discuss the related literature on green bonds. Using bibliometric mapping, I identify the 50 most influential publications in the field of green bonds. Key research streams include the benefits of green bonds; the regulations and standards of green bonds; and financing for sustainable development. I assess these publications and identify five key emerging research trends: (1) green bonds as a signal of sustainable commitment; (2) global environmental change driving financing innovation; (3) regulatory challenges; (4) portfolio diversification; and (5) product markets versus financial markets.
In Chapter 3, I discuss a qualitative study of green bonds. I employ a mixed methods inquiry approach following Patton (2002, p. 65). I generate themes and variables in this qualitative study and then test them using the quantitative approach discussed in Chapter 4. Both studies received ethics approval by the Macquarie University Ethics Committee.
In Chapter 3, the qualitative study is based on grounded theory. I conduct 32 in-depth one-on-one interviews with green bond market stakeholders to explore the future and usefulness of green bonds. The interviews are based on China’s green bond market. I create the open-ended interview questions from the findings of the papers in the literature review in Chapter 2. I analyse the qualitative data using an iteration process during the 32 interviews. This qualitative study generates three final themes: government support, sustainable development, and issues with green bonds.
Combining the findings from the papers in the literature review (Chapter 2) and the qualitative study (Chapter 3), I conduct a wide-ranging survey on the future and usefulness of green bonds. I discuss this survey in Chapter 4. I designed the survey to address the potential issues of participation rates. I also take both ex ante and ex post measures to address known biases, such as common method variance. I collect the survey data from 265 green bond market stakeholders via a questionnaire and use STATA software Version 15.0 to analyse it. The results show that firm characteristics and fund demand in green initiatives are important to the green bond market. Additionally, the “green” features of green bonds and government support are key factors necessary to lower the cost of debt in the green bond market. Moreover, international atmosphere and other green financial instruments markets are two important factors for green bond market having a promising future. On the other hand, I find no statistically significant factors for greenwashing. The explanation for this is that although green washing does exist there are no systematic drivers of greenwashing.
