How can Public Environmental Concerns Enhance Corporate ESG Performance?Based on a Dual Perspective of External Pressure And Internal Concerns
High-quality development is a proactive choice under the new normal of economic development,and is al-so a must for sustainable development of enterprises.How to drive enterprises to take into account environmental,social and governance performance(ESG)in the process of profit-seeking has become a major practical issue that cannot be avoided in the process of high-quality development.Based on this,this paper matches the ESG rating data of A-share listed companies with the Baidu search index data of environmental keywords of prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2020,and systematically examines the effect and internal influence mechanism of public environmental concern on corporate ESG performance by using a two-way fixed-effects model.The results show that public environmental concern significantly im-proves corporate ESG performance.And this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests such as replacing core explanatory variables and explanatory variables,placebo test,instrumental variables,and difference-in-differences.There-fore,in the process of realizing the transformation of corporate sustainable development,the role of the informal system of public concern should be fully emphasized,and the channels for the public to reflect their opinions and suggestions should be broadened,so as to form a good supplement to the traditional formal system such as administrative regulation and legal constraints.Mechanism analysis shows that public environmental concern promotes the improvement of corpo-rate ESG performance through the dual channels of external pressure and internal concern.On the one hand,based on the attention allocation theory,public environmental concern externally adjusts the government's attention allocation.It shifts the government's attention from unilateral economic growth to comprehensive consideration of social and livelihood issues and long-term sustainable development,forcing enterprises to pay more attention to environmental protection and actively participate in social activities,which in turn improves their ESG performance.On the other hand,based on the behavioral consistency theory,public environmental concern internally improves enterprises'own awareness of sustainable develop-ment.The increased awareness of sustainable development optimizes the allocation efficiency of resources between corpo-rate ESG practices and production and management goals,which in turn makes corporations actively incorporate ESG practices into their production and management strategies.The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that both the en-terprise's own conditions and the regional environment have a heterogeneous impact on the role of public environmental concern.First,analyzing from the firm's own conditions,the role of public environmental concern on the firm's ESG per-formance is more prominent in firms with large scale,older directors,and weaker government-enterprise connections.Second,from the analysis of the regional environment where the enterprises are located,the enhancement effect of pub-lic environmental concern on the ESG performance of enterprises is stronger in enterprises located in regions with high level of financial income and good rule of law environment.Based on this,in the process of playing the governance role of the informal system of public concern,it is necessary to pay attention to the guarantee and support of the relevant for-mal system,such as the government needs to maintain a good rule of law environment in the process of social gover-nance.Finally,further discussion reveals that media reports play a positive moderating role in the process of public con-cern for the environment to promote corporate ESG performance.Therefore,media reports need to adopt a truthful and prudent attitude,become an effective hand to alleviate the information friction faced by the market,and form another pow-erful monitoring of corporate pollution and corruption,echoing with the public environmental concern,and effectively em-powering the transformation of corporate sustainable development.
public environmental concernsESG Performanceexternal pressureinternal concerns
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