The Impact And Mechanisim Of Green Behavior Of Listed Companies On Financial Performance

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has achieved rapid development,with an average annual economic growth rate of about 9.4%.However,behind the economic development is the excessive burden of the environment.The environmental problem has become an important part of China’s sustainable development issues,which has aroused widespread concern from all walks of life.As an important undertaker of green sustainable development,enterprises are facing greater environmental pressure;As the representative of domestic enterprises,listed companies bear more social responsibility.In addition,the "financing difficulty and high financing cost" of China’s small and medium-sized enterprises has always been a key problem restricting the more efficient development of small and medium-sized enterprises,which needs to be solved urgently.This paper focuses on the relationship between green behavior and economic performance of listed companies.It should be emphasized that the research focus of this paper is not on the objective indicators such as pollution level,but on the subjective green behavior of enterprises.Through the methods of literature research,theoretical research and empirical analysis,this paper explores the influence path of"corporate green behavior——corporate social responsibility——financing constraints——economic performance",and verifies that corporate subjective green behavior can help enterprises improve their social responsibility rating,enhance investors’ attention and recognition,and reduce financing constraints,Finally,it has a positive U-shaped effect on the economic performance of enterprises.In addition,the contribution of this study also includes three aspects.Firstly,it explains the process that the motivation of green behavior of enterprises changes from external influence to internal drive.Secondly,it proves that the implementation of green management of enterprises does not contradict with the idea of maximizing their interests.Finally,it provides a new perspective for solving the financing problems of small and medium-sized enterprises and private enterprises.From the perspective of technical route,in the process of exploring the impact path of "corporate green behavior-corporate social responsibility-financing constraints-financial performance",the author first proved that green behavior has a"positive U-shaped" impact on financial performance,and financing constraints are important regulatory variables;Secondly,it proves that Chinese enterprises do face serious financing constraints in the process of operation;Next,it analyzes that corporate green behavior is helpful to alleviate financing constraints,among which corporate social responsibility is an important intermediary variable.The logic behind this is that although the implementation of green behavior by enterprises will increase their operating costs and squeeze out core business expenditure,under the guidance of the state and the improvement of the public’s green awareness,enterprises’ green operation will be recognized by government departments,rating agencies and investors,thus improving their corporate social responsibility ratings,obtaining policy and financial support,easing financing constraints,and finally achieving the effect of improving financial performance.Firstly,this paper reviews the previous studies from four aspects:the origin of enterprise green behavior,the internal and external driving factors of enterprise green behavior,and the influence effect of enterprise green behavior.It is found that there is no authoritative and unified concept of enterprise green behavior in the current academic circles,and the driving factors and the final influence effect of enterprise green behavior are confused,There is no discussion on the process and reasons of the transformation from exogenous influence to internal financial drive.Secondly,the author integrates different perspectives of green economy,corporate governance,strategic management and corporate finance,based on green economy theory,stakeholder theory,strategic cognition theory,neoclassicism theory and Porter hypothesis,This paper makes a theoretical explanation of the influence path of "green behavior——corporate social responsibility——financing constraints——economic performance".Thirdly,taking the green development policy as the starting point,the author comprehensively combs the policy support and regulatory constraints faced by enterprises in the process of implementing green management,and tries to trace the evolution process of the impact of policies on the development of enterprise green transformation from the logic of decision-making level.Firstly,this paper introduces the background and significance of green development in Chinese enterprises;Then,the process of China’s green development is divided into three stages,and the top-level design and policy evolution in the corresponding period are introduced respectively;The third section carefully combs the green policies issued by China since the 21st century and their corresponding impact;Finally,it reviews the above theories,and briefly expounds the problems faced by China’s enterprise green policy,including the low level of green supervision,the further refinement of green financial policy,the further guidance of market participation and public green consciousness,etc.In the empirical part,based on the annual data of green expenditure of listed companies from 2009 to 2018,the author explores the nonlinear relationship between green behavior and economic performance,which shows the positive U-shaped effect of green behavior on economic performance.As an moderating variable,financing constraint will increase the "positive U-shaped" effect of green behavior on financial performance,because the greater the financing constraint is,the more capital pressure will increase and the financial performance of enterprises will deteriorate when green behavior is implemented in the early stage;However,in the later stage of implementing green behavior,the environment-friendly strategy of enterprises will slow down the financing constraints of enterprises,thus leading to a more obvious positive impact of green expenditure on financial performance.Heavy polluting enterprises,non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises with high cost of equity financing have a greater U-shaped impact on economic performance.Next,the author uses the cash-cash flow sensitivity model to investigate whether my country’s listed companies are facing financing constraints,which is the premise of the mechanism research in this article.At the same time,the author further analyzes the differences in financing constraints faced by different types of environmental protection companies.It is found that the cash flow of environmental protection enterprises has a significant positive impact on investment,and non environmental protection enterprises,heavy polluting enterprises,non-state-owned enterprises,small enterprises and enterprises with high financing costs are more dependent on internal cash flow when they carry out business activities.Too high financing constraints will reduce the ability of enterprises to fight against risks and develop efficiently,which is not conducive to the realization of efficient green transformation,"carbon peaking,"high-efficiency and high-efficiency "in China The national strategic concept of"carbon neutral".Finally,the author uses the individual fixed effect model,the two-way fixed effect model,the system GMM model,and the differential GMM model to analyze the impact of corporate green behavior on financing constraints,which is the focus of this mechanism research.The results show that the implementation of green behavior by enterprises will reduce the financing constraints of enterprises.As an intermediary variable,corporate social responsibility index plays a part of the intermediary role in the impact path of green behavior on financing constraints.The implementation of green behavior by enterprises will establish a positive image,improve the green reputation and corporate social responsibility rating,gain the attention and recognition of investors,and further ease the financing constraints of enterprises.This is also the key to the enterprise’s green behavior from exogenous influence to endogenous drive:initially,the enterprise passively reduced the level of pollution and improved the efficiency of energy use under regulatory constraints,but as the enterprise observed the benefits of implementing green behavior for enterprise operation,the enterprise will have the willingness to actively change its business strategy and implement green behavior.In addition,the green behaviors of small enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises play a greater role in mitigating financing constraints.In addition,the empirical data in this paper are obtained from the Internet and annual reports of listed companies through Python crawler,which has a certain degree of data innovation;In the empirical process,we use GMM model,instrumental variable regression and lag regression of explanatory variables to eliminate the endogenous problems of the model as far as possible and ensure the robustness of the results,which verifies the scientificity,rationality and feasibility of the impact path of"corporate green behavior—corporate social responsibility——financing constraints——economic performance".Finally,according to the problems existing in the impact path,the author puts forward improvement measures from five aspects:improving the regulatory system,improving the green financial system,strengthening market participation,guiding enterprises well and improving the level of green behavior of enterprises,so as to provide reference value for the government and enterprises.