IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i3p963-d1576429.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Greening Corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance: The Impact of China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot Policy on Listed Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Rui Zhou

    (The Institute of Regional Modernization, Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, Nanjing 201824, China)

  • Jiajun Lou

    (School of Business, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222005, China)

  • Bing He

    (School of Business, Jiangsu Ocean University, Lianyungang 222005, China)

Abstract

With carbon emissions continuing to rise, global warming has become a popular research topic. To address climate change, China is taking proactive measures to reduce its carbon emissions. Covering the period between 2009 and 2021, this study utilizes data from 3668 publicly listed companies in China, along with data from their respective cities, to investigate the impact of the carbon emissions trading pilot policy on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. The conclusions show that the policy has greatly improved corporate ESG performance. However, its impact on the corporate ESG performance has varied over time, across different entities, and among different cities. Furthermore, the companies’ level of green innovation plays a crucial intermediary role. Additionally, a company’s risk-bearing capacity and level of urban green credit support positively moderate the effectiveness of the policy. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between the pilot policy and corporate ESG performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Rui Zhou & Jiajun Lou & Bing He, 2025. "Greening Corporate Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance: The Impact of China’s Carbon Emissions Trading Pilot Policy on Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(3), pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:963-:d:1576429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/963/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/963/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:963-:d:1576429. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.