Research On The Influence Mechanism Of ESG Performance On Enterprise Value

In recent years,China has attached great importance to green finance and low-carbon development,and has always taken "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality" as development goals.With the continuous progress of the times,sustainable development strategies related to socio-economic,political,ecological,cultural and other aspects are increasingly recognized by the public.The concept of sustainable development has now become a comprehensive understanding,and responsible investment has emerged.Internationally,after experiencing economic and financial fluctuations,investors have re examined traditional economic growth models and placed greater emphasis on sustainable development strategies.Global ESG investment,especially in the European and American markets,has ushered in a new wave of development.The core pillar of the concept of responsible investment is ESG(Environmental,Social Responsibility,Corporate Government).Enterprises are an important entity in ESG practice,enhancing ESG performance by enhancing their performance in environmental protection,social responsibility,corporate governance,and other aspects,thereby achieving the goal of increasing corporate value.ESG is not only an indicator for evaluating a company’s non-financial performance,but also a value system for sustainable development and an important guarantee for pursuing long-term value creation.Based on the above background and combined with the actual situation of China’s economic and financial market development,this article takes non-financial listed A-share companies in China from mid-2016 to mid-2022 as research samples,selects representative Huazheng ESG ratings as proxy variables for enterprise ESG performance,and starts from theoretical perspectives such as stakeholders,information asymmetry,and signal transmission,Conduct research around the following four types of issues:firstly,analyze the internal relationship between enterprise ESG performance and enterprise value,and verify the promoting effect of ESG overall performance on enterprise value.That is,enterprises with better ESG performance are more likely to achieve the goal of value growth.The second is to explore the channels through which ESG performance affects corporate value,and to examine the important transmission role of financing constraints and institutional investor shareholding preferences in the impact path of ESG performance on corporate value.On the one hand,ESG performance can improve corporate value by alleviating financing constraints;On the other hand,ESG performance can increase corporate value by enhancing institutional investors’ shareholding preferences.The third is to introduce economic policy uncertainty as a moderating variable to examine its moderating effect on the impact path of ESG performance on corporate value.The empirical results indicate that higher economic policy uncertainty enhances the promoting effect of corporate ESG performance on corporate value.The fourth is to expand the discussion on the differences in the impact of corporate heterogeneity on the relationship between the two,mainly from the perspectives of regional nature and ownership nature.The conclusion indicates that compared to the central and western regions,the improvement of ESG performance in the eastern region has a greater promoting effect on corporate value;Compared to state-owned enterprises,private enterprises have a greater promoting effect on corporate value by improving ESG performance.The main contributions of this article are twofold:firstly,in terms of research design,this article regards ESG performance as a comprehensive indicator rather than a single dimension,selects two channel variables:financing constraints and institutional investor shareholding preferences to examine the value effect of ESG overall performance,and delves deeper into the transmission mechanism of the value effect of ESG performance.Secondly,this article discusses the impact of economic policy uncertainty as a moderating variable,which is a perspective that has received little attention in existing literature.Based on the above theoretical analysis and empirical conclusions,this article proposes the following suggestions from multiple perspectives:firstly,enterprises themselves need to pay more attention to the disclosure of non-financial information,respond to the real needs of investors,and promote the rise of enterprise value and potential exploration.Investors need to grasp the supervision of corporate information disclosure and accountability,and fully utilize relevant information on ESG performance when making investment decisions.The government needs to introduce a unified ESG indicator framework to effectively guide enterprises to complete ESG disclosure on time and improve the quality of disclosure.