Purpose – Although firms have widely recognized the magnitude of environmental management, it is difficult for them to decide the specific quantification of environmental

investment and concrete efforts dedicated to investment transformation. To address this problem, we attempt to explore the impact of environmental management disclosure

asymmetry between manufacturers and customers on manufacturers’ environmental investment and on the relationship between environmental investment and environmental governance performance following lens of the social comparison theory.

Design/methodology/approach – We used the sample containing 1019 firms from the CSMAR database and applied the ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis to examine our hypotheses.

Findings – We find that manufacturers positioned at environmental management disclosure advantage compared with customers will curtail environmental investment and this effect might be strengthened by industry dynamism and be weakened by industry concentration and government green attention. Manufacturers at a disclosure disadvantage position will devote more efforts to transform environmental investment into enhanced environmental governance performance.

Originality/value – This study makes theoretical contributions to several research domains including the environmental management disclosure literature, environmental investment literature, and social comparison theory, and provides directions for firms’ environmental management.