企业改善ESG表现能降低财务风险吗?——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

Can Firms Improving ESG Performance Reduce Financial Risks? ——Empirical Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

以中国A股上市公司及其2010年至2021年数据为研究对象及样本,采用基本面板模型和面板分位数模型检验企业环境、社会和治理(ESG)表现对其财务风险的影响。实证结果表明:一方面,企业改善ESG表现确实可以降低财务风险,且这种影响随其自身的财务风险水平增加而减弱,但对财务风险水平极高的企业而言该影响并不明显。另一方面,作为企业内外部对上述关系产生作用的两个重要因素,“争议事件”会削弱企业ESG表现对财务风险的影响,而“董事性别”对此关系的作用则不显著。

This paper takes Chinese A-share listed companies and their data from 2010 to 2021 as the research objects and samples,and uses the basic panel model and panel quantile model to test the impact of environmental,social,and governance(ESG) performance on their financial risks.The empirical results show that,on the one hand,improving ESG performance does reduce financial risks,and this effect decreases with its own financial risk level,but it is not significant for enterprises with very high financial risk levels.On the other hand,as two important factors that contribute to this relationship,both internally and externally,“controversial events” weaken the impact of ESG performance on financial risks,while “gender of directors” does not have a significant effect on this relationship.