ESG Responsibility Fulfillment,Internet Media Supervision And Financial Performance Of Heavy Polluting Companies

In the context of promoting a comprehensive green and low-carbon transformation of economic and social development and achieving the "Double Carbon" target on schedule,the establishment of long-term strategic objectives for ESG compliance has become one of the frontier issues for listed companies worldwide to enhance their brand value and gain competitive advantages.ESG responsibility fulfillment is a long-term competitive investment that takes into account environmental,social and corporate governance and solves the "win-lose" and "lose-win" dilemma between companies’ own business interests and social interests.Enterprises are profit-oriented by nature,and they still doubt whether the fulfillment of ESG responsibilities will affect their economic interests,and the relationship between the two has not yet been conclusively discussed in academia.The concept of ESG has been introduced in China for a short time,and most domestic scholars focus on the construction of ESG liability disclosure system and evaluation system.The use of ESG indicators has mostly focused on responsible investment or the impact on corporate share prices.Studies on the relationship between ESG responsible performance and financial performance are also mostly limited to the financial and manufacturing industries.Heavy polluting enterprises can not be ignored in China’s economic development,and are the pain point and difficulty in the process of green and high quality economic development.In order to make them actively fulfill the ESG responsibilities,it is necessary to explore the relationship between ESG responsibility performance and financial performance of heavy pollution enterprises in China,and whether the impact mechanism of different dimensions of responsibility fulfillment and financial performance is different.With the continuous development of technology,internet media supervision has become an important channel for companies to build their image and improve their financial performance,and as the saying goes,there is no such thing as "quiet" social responsibility,so it has become a "catalyst" for ESG responsibility.So what effect does network media supervision play in the relationship between the two? Is there a difference in the effect of different emotional network reports on ESG-CFP relationship? These are all questions that need to be urgently identified in order to maintain sustainable development of heavy polluters in China.To explore the above problems,This paper uses data related to China’s heavy pollution enterprises from 2010 to 2020 as research samples to explore the relationship between their overall ESG responsibility performance and financial performance as well as the relationship between segmented E/S/G responsibility performance and financial performance,and the moderating role of internet media supervision and different media sentiments in the relationship between the two.Firstly,Cite Space is used to sort out the research process and hot spots of ESG abroad.Secondly,based on the current situation of heavy polluting enterprises in China,relevant hypotheses are proposed based on reputation theory,stakeholder theory,information asymmetry theory and external pressure theory.Then,ROA data of heavy polluting enterprises in China are taken as the measurement index of their financial performance,ESG responsibility performance and environmental,social and corporate governance sub-dimension performance level in Bloomberg database are taken as the core explanatory variables,and online media supervision and traditional newspaper and media supervision are taken as the moderating variables.The fixed-effect model and SYS-GMM model were used to conduct empirical tests,and further analyzed the differences of regulatory effects between online media supervision and traditional newspaper media supervision,and conducted heterogeneity tests according to the nature of enterprises and whether CEO duality.The empirical conclusions of this paper are as follows:（1）There is a U-shaped nonlinear relationship between ESG responsibility performance and financial performance of heavy polluting enterprises in China.（2）As the concept of environmental protection becomes increasingly popular,the U-shaped relationship between environmental responsibility fulfillment and financial performance of heavily polluting enterprises is more significant than that of social（S）and corporate governance（G）dimensions.（3）Different types of media supervision have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the ESG responsibility performance of China’s heavy pollution enterprises and their financial performance.But compared with the two,the regulatory effect of network media supervision is stronger than that of traditional newspaper media.Compared with positive emotional media supervision,negative emotional media reporting has a more significant moderating effect.The "black Swan" event caused by COVID-19 has added uncertainty to the economic environment,enterprises are in a difficult situation to survive,to explore the non-linear U-shaped relationship between the ESG responsibility performance of China’s heavy pollution enterprises and their financial performance,as well as the role of internet media supervision between the two,it can not only provide a theoretical basis for China’s heavy pollution enterprises to actively fulfill ESG responsibilities into long-term strategy in order to improve financial performance.It also provides reference for the rational allocation of resources in the operation of heavy pollution enterprises in China and the establishment of informal system governance by government departments.