绿色金融发展是否提高了企业ESG表现?——基于我国上市公司的经验证据

Does development of green finance promote ESG performance?-empirical evidence from Chinese listed companies

绿色金融是推动经济社会可持续发展的重要力量,环境、社会和治理(environment,social and governance,ESG)表现是衡量企业可持续发展水平的重要标准。探究绿色金融发展能否赋能企业ESG表现的提升具有重要意义。本文基于2014—2022年中国A股上市公司的数据考察绿色金融对ESG表现的影响。研究发现:绿色金融与ESG表现存在显著的正相关关系,证明绿色金融对企业ESG表现提升具有赋能效应,且绿色金融对ESG单一维度的环境(E)、社会(S)、治理(G)表现均有显著的促进效果。绿色金融对异质性企业的ESG表现呈现非对称性影响,具体表现在绿色金融对东部地区和小规模企业ESG表现的促进作用更加显著。对绿色金融影响ESG表现的机制进行研究发现,绿色金融促进企业ESG表现主要通过融资赋能效应(即缓解企业融资约束)和技术赋能效应(即提高企业绿色创新的数量和质量)来实现。该研究厘清了绿色金融推动企业ESG表现的内在逻辑,为发展绿色金融、提升企业ESG表现提供参考。

Green finance is an important force by which to promote sustainable economic and social development.Environmental,social and governance(ESG)performance is one of the standards to measure the level of sustainable development of companies.It is of great significance to explore whether green finance can empower the improvement of ESG performance.This paper examines the impact of green finance on ESG performance based on the data from 2014 to 2022 of China’s A-share listed companies.The research finds that there is a significant positive correlation between green finance and ESG performance,which proves that green finance has an enabling effect on ESG performance.Moreover,green finance can promote the single dimension performance of environmental(E),social(S)and governance(G).Green finance has an asymmetric impact on ESG performance of heterogeneous enterprises,and the promotion effect of green finance on ESG performance of eastern regions and small-size enterprises is of more significance.Through the study of the mechanism for green finance affecting ESG performance,we find that green finance improves ESG performance mainly through financing empowerment effect(that is,alleviating corporate financing constraints)and technology empowerment effect(that is,improving the quantity and quality of corporate green innovation).This study clarifies the internal logic of green finance promoting enterprise ESG performance and provides references for developing green finance and improving enterprise ESG performance.