Investigation and penalty on major industrial accidents in China: The influence of environmental pressures

Hundreds of major industrial accidents happened in China every year which resulted in serious physical and social damage to the whole society. The post-accident investigation and penalties have caused great concern in recent years. Our study extends the research on accident investigation and penalty under different kinds of environmental pressures. Using 150 major industrial accidents and their disclosed investigation reports from the State Administrative of Work Safety of China (SAWSC), we found that the number of administrative penalty, judicial penalty, fines and the accident investigation duration by the government are significantly affected by the environmental pressures including the legal environment pressure, media attention pressure, enterprise ownership pressure and the industry pressure. According to the Deterrence Theory and the Social Learning Theory, the involvement and promptness of penalties significantly influence the deterrent effect for observing peers. Our study shed light on the accident penalties under certain environmental pressure in order to achieve the optimum deterrent effect by giving suggestions to the accident-related stakeholders.