企业ESG实践的价值创造效应研究——基于外部压力视角的检验

提升企业价值是企业进行ESG实践的目标和根本动力。文章以2008—2019年沪深A股上市公司数据为研究样本,实证检验了ESG实践对企业价值的影响效应,并以市场竞争程度、机构投资者、媒体监督为切入点,分析外部压力对于企业ESG实践价值效应的调节作用。研究发现：ESG实践初期会降低企业价值,从长期来看,ESG实践对企业价值存在正向的滞后作用。当企业面临的外部压力越大时,市场竞争可以显著提升ESG实践的价值效应,机构投资者和媒体监督会削弱ESG实践对企业价值的影响。也进一步说明由于我国资本市场的特殊性,外部压力不能必然地转化为治理机制。

Research on the Value Creation Effect of Corporate ESG Practice: A Test Based on the Perspective of External Pressure

Enhancing firm value is the goal and fundamental driving force for companies to exert ESG practice. This paper takes the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2019 as a research sample, and empirically tests the correlation between ESG practice and firm value, and takes market competition, institutional investors, and media supervision to explore the impact of external pressure on the moderating role of corporate ESG practice value effect. Our study finds that ESG practice will inhibit the growth of enterprise value in the early stage. From the perspective of long-term market value, ESG practice has a lagging positive effect on firm value. When companies face greater external pressure, market competition can significantly enhance the value effect of ESG practices, while institutional investors and media supervision will weaken the impact of ESG practices on firm value. It also further illustrates that due to the particularity of developing country's capital market, external pressure cannot necessarily be transformed into a governance mechanism.Our contributions are as follows: First, it confirms the dynamic mechanism of corporate ESG practice, and provides empirical evidence for the sustainable development of companies. At present, the empirical evidence based on ESG practices in developing countries is still very limited. Most of the discussions on the economic consequences of ESG are single studies focusing on environmental factors (E), social responsibility factors (S), and governance factors (G). Based on the data of Chinese listed companies, this paper confirms the value-creating effect of ESG practice from the perspective that companies are actually implementing ESG concepts when implementing ESG-related projects. Second, domestic and foreign studies still have divergent conclusions on the relationship between ESG and firm value. In view of this, different from the single-period perspective test method in the previous literature, this paper is based on an inter-period perspective, not only limited to the impact of ESG practices on the current value of enterprises, but also focusing on the long-term value creation role of ESG practices, clarifying the relationship between the two.It expands and enriches the related research on the economic consequences of ESG practice, and also provides theoretical support for companies to test the dynamic mechanism of ESG practice. Third, this paper introduces external pressure into the study of ESG practical value effect for the first time, and explores whether external pressure will promote or weaken the adjustment effect of ESG practical value effect. The conclusion shows that due to the particularity of the Chinese capital market, external pressure cannot necessarily be transformed into an effective external governance mechanism. Consequently, ensuring orderly market competition, institutional investors participating in governance, and external media governance have certain reference significance for exerting the value creation effect of ESG practice.