Research On The Impact Of Environmental Protection Fee-to-Tax Policy On Corporate ESG Performance

The report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that high-quality development has become the primary task of comprehensively building a modern socialist China.ESG is a comprehensive evaluation system for corporate sustainability based on the concept of responsible investment.2021 saw the release of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment’s In 2021,the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued the "Reform Plan for the Legal Disclosure System of Environmental Information",and in 2022,the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the "Guidelines for Investor Relations Management of Listed Companies".The successive issuance of a series of policy guidelines reflects the determination of the government and regulatory authorities to further promote the construction and development of China’s ESG system,requiring enterprises to accelerate the construction of ESG system and comprehensively improve their environmental,social and corporate governance capabilities.As a result,corporate ESG performance has increasingly reflected its importance and gradually become a current academic hotspot.However,the development of ESG in China is still at a preliminary stage,and the overall ESG performance of enterprises is not high,and there is still much room for improvement.In such a national situation,in order to improve ESG performance of enterprises,the formulation and implementation efficiency of relevant policies are particularly important.Among them,green fiscal policies are more prominent for enterprises to enhance environmental governance and achieve sustainable development transformation.This thesis takes the change of the environmental protection tax instead of the emission fee in 2018 as the entry point for the policy,and makes use of the ShanghaiShenzhen taxation system from 2014 to 2021.data related to Shanghai and Shenzhen Ashare listed companies from 2014-2021,and integrate the mediating effect into a doubledifference model to explore the relationship between the change of environmental protection fee to tax and corporate ESG performance,and further explore whether R&D investment plays a mediating effect in it.Through this study,the following conclusions are obtained:(1)the implementation of environmental protection tax policy promotes ESG performance;(2)the implementation of environmental protection tax policy also promotes R&D investment;(3)R&D investment plays a partial mediating effect in the relationship between environmental protection fee tax change and ESG performance;(4)the positive effect of environmental protection fee tax change on ESG performance is significant in non-state(4)the positive effect of environmental fee tax change on ESG performance is significant in non-state owned enterprises and large scale enterprises,but not in state owned enterprises and small scale enterprises;the positive policy effect of environmental fee tax change on ESG performance is more prominent in areas where the tax rate is slow to increase;the mediating effect of R&D investment exists only in non-state owned enterprises,large scale enterprises and areas where the tax rate is slow to increase.In this study,we try to explore the impact of policy changes in environmental protection tax on corporate ESG performance in the context of increasingly severe environmental problems,further enriching the literature on the factors influencing corporate ESG performance.Further,this thesis introduces R&D investment as a mediating variable to explore and expand the influence path of the relationship between environmental protection fee to tax change and corporate ESG performance.It provides a new perspective for governmental departments to further improve environmental protection tax policies.