Controlling Shareholder Equity Pledge and Corporate ESG Responsibility Fulfillment Inhibition or Promotion

Abstract

Corporate ESG responsibility fulfillment has become an important measure for enterprises to practice low-carbon development concepts at the micro level and promote corporate social responsibility fulfillment and corporate governance. During this process, the behavior of corporate shareholders has also become an important factor affecting the fulfillment of corporate ESG responsibilities. Based on the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022, this paper studies and analyzes the impact of the controlling shareholder's equity pledge behavior on the performance of corporate ESG responsibilities. The study found that the controlling party's equity pledge behavior inhibits the fulfillment of ESG responsibilities; optimizing the internal control environment and increasing corporate social attention can reduce the negative impact of pledge behavior on the fulfillment of ESG responsibilities to a certain extent; in the analysis of corporate heterogeneity, Equity pledge has less inhibitory effect on state-owned enterprises' performance of ESG responsibilities, and the effect on non-state-owned enterprises is more obvious. Based on this, the research puts forward three dimensions of policy suggestions to improve ownership structure, strengthen internal control and strengthen external supervision, in order to bring effective guidance for standardizing enterprise ESG performance.