Corporate Governance and Regional Ecological Restoration: Insights from an Environmental Science Perspective

Authors

  • Jingwei Bao

    Accounting School, Nanfang College Guangzhou, Guangzhou 510970, China; School of Business and Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Malaysia
  • Kezhen Zhang

    Accounting School, Nanfang College Guangzhou, Guangzhou 510970, China
  • Atqa Abdullah Asna

    School of Business and Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Malaysia
  • Sabarina Mohammed Shah

    School of Business and Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/re.v8i2.12618
Received: 29 October 2025 | Revised: 22 December 2025 | Accepted: 31 December 2025 | Published Online: 16 April 2026

Abstract

The growing destruction of natural ecosystems highlights the importance of the urgency to provide frameworks that would efficiently involve corporate governance principles in the ecological restoration of the regions. Ecological restoration that aims at restoring the degraded ecological settings so that ecological functionality is restored entails cooperation between industries, policymakers, and the community. This research explores the effects of Transparency (Tr), Accountability (Ac), environmental responsibility (ER), and Corporate Social Responsibility and Stakeholder engagement Integration (CSI) in corporate governance mechanisms on sustainable ecological restoration. Respondents were sampled from 520 participants in industries, environmental groups, and governmental agencies, with regional reports on environmental and corporate sustainability added as supplementary data. It proved the governance restoration framework using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with SPSS, using outstanding model fit indices (CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.043). The results found that ER () and Tr () have the greatest positive impact on the restoration's performance, followed by. Ac () and CSI (). The analytical findings demonstrated that the positive impact on the success of the restoration in the regions was higher in terms of governance Tr and stakeholder Ac than environmental disclosure practices and cross-sector partnerships. The quality of governance was found to be a significant factor in ecological efficiency, with regions of high quality showing around 26% improvement in ecological efficiency, which confirms that corporate integrity and openness have a significant impact on improving biodiversity recovery, pollution mitigation, and community involvement.

Keywords:

Corporate Governance; Ecological Restoration; Sustainability; Transparency; Accountability; Biodiversity

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How to Cite

Bao, J., Zhang, K., Asna, A. A., & Shah, S. M. (2026). Corporate Governance and Regional Ecological Restoration: Insights from an Environmental Science Perspective. Research in Ecology, 8(2), 284–297. https://doi.org/10.30564/re.v8i2.12618

Issue

Vol.8, Iss.2 (April 2026)(in progress)

Article Type

Article

License

Copyright © 2026 Jingwei Bao, Kezhen Zhang, Atqa Abdullah Asna, Sabarina Mohammed Shah

Creative Commons License

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

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