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Keywords

enterprise ESG performance, green innovation, financing constraints, human capital, risk-taking

Abstract

The proposal of the dual carbon goals of “carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060” has imposed higher demands on the green and high-quality development of enterprises. Green innovation is an important way for enterprises to achieve both economic and environmental benefits, and is considered to be an important starting point for sustainable economic development and socialist ecological civilization. However, due to the public goods characteristics of green innovation, the entire process from R&D to practical application and commercialization is highly uncertain, leading to a natural shortage of supply at the enterprise level. As the micro-subject of green economic development, enterprises are the main force of green innovation. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to explore how to enhance the ability and willingness of enterprises to promote green innovation in China's efforts to achieve high-quality development. ESG systematically evaluates the sustainable development of enterprises from the perspectives of environmental protection, social responsibility and internal governance, which has an important influence on guiding enterprises to actively carry out green innovation activities. At the macro level, it has become an important starting point for the national green and high-quality development, and at the micro level, it has become a key standard for measuring the sustainable development of enterprises and fulfilling their social responsibilities. However, there are differences in the existing literature on the relationship between ESG performance and green innovation. Therefore, whether ESG can really promote green innovation and realize the balance between economic and social benefits needs to be further studied. Based on this, this study takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2023 as samples, uses two-way fixed effect model to empirically analyze the green innovation effect and potential mechanism of ESG performance of enterprises, and conducts heterogeneity analysis. It is found that there is a significant positive correlation between good ESG performance and enterprise green innovation, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of endogeneity tests and robustness tests. According to the analysis of potential mechanisms, good ESG performance mainly promotes green innovation through mechanisms such as easing financing constraints, upgrading human capital and improving risk taking. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the driving effect of ESG performance on green innovation is more obvious in larger enterprises and state-owned enterprises. The research conclusions provide empirical evidence and reference for promoting the deep integration of ESG performance and corporate green innovation, and promoting the high-quality green development of enterprises. The contributions of this paper are as follows: firstly, it examines the impact of corporate ESG performance on green innovation, enriches the research on the influencing factors of green innovation, expands the research on the non-economic consequences of ESG performance of enterprises, and provides new ideas for the research on the influencing factors and promotion paths of green innovation of enterprises; Secondly, this study analyzes the potential impact mechanism of ESG on corporate green innovation, which helps to reveal the internal relationship between corporate ESG performance and green innovation, open the black box of the relationship between the two, and expand the research perspective of relevant literature. Finally, heterogeneity analysis is helpful to understand the relationship between enterprise ESG performance and enterprise green innovation more comprehensively, and provide reference for the government to implement accurate policies.

DOI

10.16315/j.stm.2024.05.006

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