低碳政策与企业ESG表现:基于政策强度的视角OACHSSCD

Enhancing corporate ESG performance not only helps firms achieve long-term value growth,but also plays an important role in promoting China's high-quality economic development and sustainable development.At the critical stage of the green transformation of the economy,objectively evaluating the impact of government low-carbon policies on firms' green behavior helps deepen our understanding of the drivers of corporate green transformation and provides empirical evidence for optimizing the low-carbon policy system.Existing studies have extensively examined the determinants of corporate ESG performance.However,in the field of environmental regulation,the relevant literature has largely focused on the implementation effects of individual policies,and has not yet systematically examined the impact of low-carbon policies on corporate ESG performance from the perspective of policy intensity. From the perspective of government low-carbon policy intensity,this study investigates how China's low-carbon policies affect corporate ESG performance.Specifically,using Chinese A-share listed firms from 2007 to 2022 as the research sample,this study systematically examines whether low-carbon policy intensity can improve corporate ESG performance by enhancing firms' green innovation and increasing environmental information disclosure.The empirical results show that higher low-carbon policy intensity significantly improves corporate ESG performance,and that this positive effect is mainly reflected in the environmental and social responsibility dimensions.Further analysis based on low-carbon policy characteristics shows that the positive impact of low-carbon policy intensity on corporate ESG performance is mainly driven by provincial-level policies and policies with carbon reduction or energy conservation objectives.Mechanism tests show that low-carbon policy intensity improves corporate ESG performance by increasing firms' green innovation and improving environmental information disclosure.Heterogeneity analysis indicates that,from the perspective of firms' internal characteristics,low-carbon policy intensity has a more pronounced positive effect on the ESG performance of state-owned enterprises,firms with lower financing constraints,and firms whose executives have overseas backgrounds.From the perspective of external supervision mechanisms,the positive effect of low-carbon policy intensity on corporate ESG performance is stronger when public environmental concern is higher in the region where the firm is located or when the firm receives greater media attention. Compared with prior research,this study makes the following marginal contributions.(1)From a comprehensive perspective of low-carbon policy intensity,this study systematically analyzes the pathways through which low-carbon policy intensity affects corporate behavior,thereby extending the approach of existing studies that mainly rely on individual pilot policies to evaluate policy effects.While the existing literature often examines the implementation effects of environmental regulation in the context of a single policy,this study uses a multidimensional policy intensity indicator to examine the systematic impact of low-carbon policies on corporate behavior,thereby enriching the literature on how environmental regulation affects micro-level corporate behavior.(2)Within the framework of corporate sustainability,this study further links low-carbon policy intensity with corporate ESG performance and explores how government low-carbon policy intensity shapes firms' sustainable development behavior,thereby extending the literature on the determinants of corporate ESG performance.Compared with prior studies that mainly explain differences in corporate ESG performance from the perspectives of signaling,institutional investors,and media attention,this study introduces policy-driven factors and provides new empirical evidence for understanding the relationship between government policy instruments and corporate sustainable development.(3)From the perspective of heterogeneity in policy levels and policy objectives,this study systematically compares the differential effects of low-carbon policy intensity decomposed by administrative level and policy objective on corporate ESG performance,and identifies the types of policies that are more effective in promoting improvements in corporate ESG performance.These findings provide empirical evidence for optimizing the formulation of low-carbon policies and improving policy implementation efficiency. This study shows that increasing low-carbon policy intensity plays an important role in improving corporate ESG performance.Going forward,further efforts should be made to optimize the low-carbon policy system,enhance policy implementation effectiveness,and encourage firms to actively fulfill their environmental and social responsibilities,thereby promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of the economy and society.