IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pacfin/v85y2024ics0927538x24001409.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Before thrive, first survive: The impact of controlling shareholder pledging on corporate ESG performance

Author

Listed:
  • Gao, Yang
  • Ling, Yun
  • Peng, Hui

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of controlling shareholder pledging on corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Using data from Chinese listed firms, we show that controlling shareholder pledging significantly weakens firms' ESG performance and that this effect is robust to endogeneity and the choice of ESG metrics and controlling shareholder pledging measures. In addition, we show that the main channel through which ESG performance deteriorates for firms with controlling shareholder pledging is the risk of losing control. The adverse impact of controlling shareholder pledging on ESG is much less when control rights are not at risk. On the other hand, limited resources (e.g. tunnelling and financial constraints) contribute little to the impact. Our further analyses demonstrate that internal monitoring mechanisms can mitigate the negative impact of controlling shareholder pledging on corporate ESG performance, but external monitoring mechanisms cannot.

Suggested Citation

  • Gao, Yang & Ling, Yun & Peng, Hui, 2024. "Before thrive, first survive: The impact of controlling shareholder pledging on corporate ESG performance," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:85:y:2024:i:c:s0927538x24001409
    DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X24001409
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.pacfin.2024.102389?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agency problems; Controlling shareholder pledging; ESG; Corporate monitoring;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:85:y:2024:i:c:s0927538x24001409. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/pacfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.