Research On The Impact Of ESG Performance On Enterprise R&D Investment

In the era of economic globalization and sustainable development,continuous R&D investment by enterprises is a key link to enhance their innovation ability and market competitiveness,and is also an important path to achieve sustainable development.At present,China’s enterprises have significantly insufficient funding for research and development,so how to promote enterprises to increase investment in research and development is a key issue that scholars have focused on.ESG comprehensively reflects the overall performance of enterprises in the three aspects of environment,society and governance,and is an important indicator to measure the comprehensive development potential of enterprises.ESG fully embodies the concepts of sustainable development and green low-carbon,and is highly consistent with China’s development strategy.In recent years,it has gradually become a hot topic of academic research.However,few scholars have analyzed the relationship between ESG performance and enterprise R&D investment at this stage.Based on this,this article starts from the ESG concept and comprehensively explores the impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment,hoping to provide new ideas for research in related fields.This article takes Chinese A-share listed companies as the research object,calculates enterprise R&D investment indicators,and uses ESG score data from Huazheng,Wind and Bloomberg rating agencies,to conduct in-depth research on the impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment under different ESG rating systems.Secondly,this article conducts a heterogeneity analysis from four perspectives:the location of the enterprise,the size of the enterprise,the industry in which the enterprise is located,and the production and R&D background of senior executives,to compare and analyze whether there are differences in the impact of ESG performance on R&D investment among different types of enterprises.Finally,this paper tests the robustness by replacing the measurement method of enterprise R&D investment,adding fixed effects from provinces,testing the sensitivity of extreme values of data,changing the time window,and analyzing the lag of explanatory variables.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between ESG performance and enterprise R&D investment.Under the ratings systems of Huazheng ESG,Wind ESG and Bloomberg ESG,the impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment is consistent.(2)The positive impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment is heterogeneous in terms of region,enterprise size,industry and executive production R&D background.Compared with enterprises in the central and western regions,ESG performance has a more significant impact on R&D investment of enterprises in the eastern region;Compared with smaller enterprises,ESG performance has a more significant impact on R&D investment of larger enterprises;The impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment is significant in the secondary and tertiary industries,but not significant in the primary industry;When executives have a production and research background,ESG performance has a more significant impact on research and development investment.(3)The research results have a certain degree of robustness,not caused by extreme data values,missing fixed effects in provinces,and the positive impact of ESG performance on enterprise R&D investment has a long-term effect.Based on the main research conclusions,this article proposes relevant suggestions for the three main entities of government,enterprises and investors.It is suggested that all parties should pay more attention to ESG performance and promote enterprises to increase R&D investment.