ESG Performance,Media Coverage And Corporate Performance

As the guiding ideology of our Party and State in production and construction,production safety is an important policy in China.Once a safety accident occurs,it will threaten the production safety of the general public and bring about irreparable property losses.Since the promulgation of the Work Safety Law in 2002,the safety accounting system has become more and more perfect under the promotion of various laws and regulations,but how to scientifically promote safety production is still a difficult problem facing China.As China is now in a critical period of economic structural transformation,how to strengthen ESG management to achieve the long-term strategic objectives of enterprises has become one of the important studies for listed companies worldwide to enhance their corporate value and competitive advantage.ESG is a powerful tool for considering environmental,social and corporate governance,and for solving the problem of who has the upper hand in the economic and social benefits of an enterprise,which can bring continuous competitiveness to an enterprise.At present,research on ESG theory in China is still in its infancy,and most scholars in China focus on the construction of ESG information disclosure system and evaluation system.Research on the relationship between ESG performance and corporate performance is still controversial,and the research objects are mostly limited to individual industries.As an important part of China’s economic development,high-risk industries are the pain and difficulty in the process of China’s high-quality economic development.Can the ESG performance of high-risk industries reflect the level of financial performance and safety performance at the same time,and is there any significant difference in the impact of ESG performance on the two? It is worth exploring further.With the modern media being three-dimensional,online and fast,the media is becoming an important channel for companies to build their image and deliver their messages,and media coverage is considered to be a catalyst for companies to fulfil their social responsibility.What is the role of media coverage in corporate ESG performance and corporate performance? Is there a difference in the role of ESG performance on financial performance and safety performance among high-risk companies with different levels of media coverage? These are the questions that need to be identified in order to maintain the sustainable development of listed companies in high-risk industries in China.This paper explores the impact of ESG performance on the financial and safety performance of companies listed in high-risk industries,and the moderating role of media coverage,using the A-share high-risk industry from 2017 to 2021 as an example.Firstly,descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were conducted on the data characteristics of each variable.Secondly,this paper determines the selection of variables based on correlation analysis and eliminates the possibility of multicollinearity among the variables by means of multicollinearity test.In this way,the conclusions of the study were initially predicted.Again,this paper tested the hypotheses previously proposed by constructing a multiple linear regression model,and conducted robustness and endogeneity tests according to the possible robustness and endogeneity problems of the model.The final conclusions are:(1)ESG performance of listed companies in high-risk industries is synchronous with changes in corporate performance performance,the better the ESG performance,the better the corporate performance.And the effect of ESG performance on safety performance is more obvious than that on financial performance.(2)Media coverage plays a moderating role in the effect of ESG performance on corporate performance.Media coverage weakens the contribution of ESG performance to corporate performance of listed companies in high-risk industries.(3)The results of the heterogeneity test based on the shareholding ratio of institutional investors show that the high shareholding ratio group is more significant than the low shareholding ratio group,both in the effect of ESG performance on corporate financial performance and safety performance and in the moderating role of media coverage in both.Finally,the paper concludes with a summary of the full paper and policy recommendations based on the empirical findings.