Media Reports And The Quality Of Enterprises’ ESG Information Disclosure

In recent years,the concept of ESG,which makes environmental protection,social responsibility and corporate governance as its core elements,has attracted wide attention from domestic and foreign investors.ESG coincides with the theme of high-quality development.Therefore,it is attached great importance by our government.Enterprises’ ESG information disclosure is a necessary and prerequisite condition for promoting ESG development and forming a good ESG investment market,which is also an important basis for investors to make decisions.Improving the ESG information disclosure quality not only helps enterprises improve their comprehensive competitiveness and realize their own value growth and long-term sustainable development,but also can drive the positive interaction among enterprises,investors and regulators,which is important for implementing the goal connotation of the new development concept.The media,which is seemed as the third-party mechanism in the capital market,has rapid integration with the Internet and big data,and its role in disseminating information and public opinion supervision has become more and more obvious.At present,China has not yet formed a unified enterprise ESG information disclosure standards,ESG information disclosure is mainly voluntary.In the enterprises’ s ESG information disclosure practice,companies may “greenwash” their ESG reports for certain interest motives,and make disclosures and commitments that differ from words to deeds.Therefore,the quality of ESG information disclosure has become the key to its reliability,which has also become an aspect that has attracted media attention.At this stage,whether media reports have an impact on the quality of ESG information disclosure is worthy of systematic discussion.This paper took A-share listed enterprises as research samples,which covered from2015 to 2020,and empirically tested the relationship between media reports and the quality of enterprises’ ESG information disclosure quality.This paper found that media reports can improve the quality of ESG information disclosure,which still held after distinguishing the positive and negative aspects of media reports.Secondly,this paper examined the "supervision effect" and "information effect" of media coverage on the quality of corporate ESG disclosure,and the results showed that media coverage can promote the quality of corporate ESG disclosure by strengthening external monitoring and increasing investors’ attention.Further more,this paper tested the impact of media reports on the quality of ESG disclosure from the triple perspectives of micro-property rights,meso-industry competition,and macro-institutional environment.The heterogeneity results showed that in the state-owned enterprises,the enterprises with low level of industry competition,and the enterprises with better regional institutional environment,the positive effect of media reports on the ESG disclosure quality are more significant.Finally,the article found that the more optimistic media sentiment is,the more it can promote the enterprises’ ESG information disclosure quality.This paper’s research provides a theoretical basis to understand deeply the impact of media attention on corporate ESG information disclosure behavior.At the same time,it provides for Chinese listed enterprises a practical guideline to promote the construction of ESG information disclosure system.