银企ESG一致性与贷后企业策略性ESG行为

Bank-Enterprise ESG Consistency and Post-loan Corporate Strategic ESG Behavior

一致性理论指出,主体间的双向一致有助于信息交换的帕累托改进,进而影响其行为选择策略。近年来,ESG行为呈现出形式上顺应迎合而实质上复杂多样的态势。现有文献大多聚焦于单一主体视角下的ESG需求和供给问题,而鲜有文献在贷前贷后情境下理解银企ESG一致性与企业策略性ESG行为的关系。文章研究发现,贷前银企ESG一致性能够显著抑制贷后企业ESG“言行不一”的行为;与ESG“漂棕”相比,贷前银企ESG一致性更能抑制企业贷后ESG“漂绿”。机制分析表明,贷前银企ESG一致性能够发挥“资金效应”和“治理效应”,约束贷后企业的策略性ESG行为。异质性分析表明,贷前银企ESG一致性对贷后企业策略性ESG行为的抑制作用在不同的产权属性、企业对银行贷款依赖度以及银行规模下存在差异。文章还发现,与贷前银企ESG象征性一致相比,贷前银企ESG实质性一致对贷后企业策略性ESG行为的影响更大。文章的研究不仅为理解银企借贷关系框架下企业的策略性ESG行为提供了新视角,而且对于监管部门完善ESG信息披露制度、推动银企协作共助ESG发展具有重要启示。

Bank-enterprise relationship plays an important role in the allocation of credit resources in the capital market.With the increasingly prominent tendency of corporate ESG practice towards“inconsistent words and actions”in ESG,it is urgent to strengthen governance.Existing literature has explored the factors affecting corporate strategic ESG behavior from the aspects of corporate governance structure,policy regulatory pressure,and environmental institutional differences.However,most studies only focus on the impact of a single entity on ESG performance,and few explore the impact of bank-enterprise ESG consistency on corporate strategic ESG behavior in the context of pre-loan and post-loan.Therefore,using the loan data from A-share listed companies and commercial banks in China from 2010 to 2020,this paper finds that pre-loan bank-enterprise ESG consistency can significantly suppress the behavior of“inconsistent words and actions”in post-loan corporate ESG.Compared to the ESG“brownwash”behavior,pre-loan bank-enterprise ESG consistency effectively reduces the ESG“greenwash”behavior.Mechanism testing finds that pre-loan bank-enterprise ESG consistency mainly affects post-loan corporate strategic ESG behavior through the“capital effect”and the“governance effect”.Heterogeneity analysis shows that when enterprises are state-owned,enterprises have higher dependence on bank loans,and banks are larger,the negative relationship between pre-loan bank-enterprise ESG consistency and post-loan corporate strategic ESG behavior is more significant.Finally,this paper also finds that the better the performance of pre-loan bank ESG and the higher the substantive consistency of bank-enterprise ESG,the more significant the inhibitory effect on corporate strategic ESG behavior.The possible marginal contributions of this paper are as follows:First,it not only innovatively expands the research on bank-enterprise relationship from the perspective of bank-enterprise consistency,but also enriches the research on the governance effect of bank-enterprise relationship from the perspective of“inconsistent words and actions”in corporate ESG.Second,it expands the literature on how stakeholder networks affect corporate ESG behavior.Third,it not only expands the research on the influencing factors of corporate strategic ESG behavior,but also expands the research on the phenomenon of“greenwash”and“brownwash”in enterprises by taking corporate strategic ESG behavior as the entry point to analyze the economic reasons for choosing the“greenwash”or“brownwash”behavior.