The Sustainability of Corporate ESG Performance: An Empirical Study

Abstract

A company’s ESG (environmental, social, and government) performance is an indicator of its sustainable development. In practice, enterprises should focus on improving their governance structure and improving their governance level to achieve sustainable development and long-term value. Based on a sample of China’s A-share-listed companies from 2014 to 2022, this paper obtains data from the WIND and CSMAR databases and finally selects 14,757 observed values. With ESG performance as the explained variable and Pledge as the explanatory variable, the relationship between major shareholders’ equity pledges and ESG performance is explored using a regression analysis. The results show that the correlation coefficient, β1, between corporate ESG performance and the pledge ratio of major shareholders is −0.0167, which is significantly negative at the 1% level, indicating that the equity pledges of major shareholders will have a negative impact on corporate ESG performance, and ESG performance shows that the pressure of controlling shareholders’ equity pledges mainly reduces the performance of companies in the areas of social responsibility (S) and governance (G) and does not have a significant impact on environmental construction (E). Further research shows that under the same conditions, compared with state-owned enterprises, the equity pledge behavior of major shareholders of private enterprises has a more significant impact on corporate ESG performance. This study is a good attempt at examining the sustainability of corporate ESG performance.