绿色投资者发挥作用吗？——来自企业参与绿色治理的经验研究

本文以2006-2016年沪深A股上市公司为样本,实证检验绿色投资者对企业参与绿色治理的影响作用。研究发现:存在绿色投资者的企业更可能实施绿色行动、增加绿色支出和提高绿色治理绩效。进一步研究表明,绿色投资者对绿色行动的促进作用在弱环保意识地区的企业中更加明显、对企业绿色支出的促进作用在重污染企业和国有企业中更加明显,而绿色投资者对企业绿色治理绩效的提升作用在非重污染企业、弱环保意识地区和国有企业中更加明显。此外,本文还发现更可能实施绿色行动、较高绿色支出和绿色治理绩效的企业,越可能获得绿色投资者的认同;除绿色支出负向影响企业经营绩效之外,绿色行动和绿色治理绩效均有利于提高企业经营绩效。本文研究结论不仅丰富了有关机构投资者和企业绿色治理领域的文献,对完善绿色金融体系和实现绿色发展战略也具有一定的启示意义。

Do Green Investors Play a Role？ Empirical Research on Firms' Participation in Green Governance

With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in China, ecological environment problems become more prominent, seriously hindering the inclusive growth of humans and nature. In recent years, China's green finance policies have led to a group of particular institutional investors—green investors. As the main body of social responsibility investment, they aim to choose the investment responsibility for the society, guide the enterprises to carry out the green concept into the social behaviors such as clean operation and promote the enterprises to pursue economic benefits and pay more attention to social responsibility and public interests. Whether and how green investors affect the participation of enterprises in green governance have become the critical issue of our research. To this end, our study first examines the impact of green investors on firms' participation in green governance, and then explores heterogeneity on the pollution level, the nature of property rights, and regional environmental awareness. Finally, we investigate the social and economic benefits of firms' participation in green governance.Using a sample of A-share listed firms from 2006 to 2016, we explore the impact of green investors on firms' participation in green governance. Our findings suggest that green investors play an active role in the promotion of corporate green governance. Further investigation indicates that the promotion effect of green investors on green action is more substantial in enterprises with weak environmental awareness, the impact on green expenditure is more substantial in heavy polluting enterprises and state-owned enterprises, and the effect on green governance performance is more substantial in non-heavy polluting enterprises and state-owned enterprises and enterprises in weak environmental awareness. Finally, we find that the enterprises with more green governance participation are more likely to be recognized by green investors; although the green expenditure reduces the performance(Roa), the green action and green governance performance increase the performance(Roa).The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, we explore the influencing factors of green governance from the enterprise level, which provides a new perspective for the research on corporate green governance. Second, starting from the investment purpose and green concept of green investors, considering the influence ways of “voting with hands” and “voting with feet”, we explore the influence mechanism of green investors on firm's participation in green governance, which is a useful supplement to the existing research.Our findings also have important policy implications. First, China should not only actively guide the investment of green investors and play an effective role in the implementation of sustainable development strategy, but also establish a sound green financial system, create an excellent external financing environment for corporate green governance. Second, from the perspective of its long-term sustainable development, enterprises should fully realize the scientific nature of incorporating green investors, corporate green governance, and long-term business performance into the framework of enterprise performance management, actively cooperate with and strive to practice the investment intention of green investors, establish a good corporate image to build a relationship network worthy of investors' trust. Moreover, enterprises should also strive to identify the cognitive requirements and expectations of social participants for the sustainable development of enterprises to obtain more green financing.