Green Financial Reform and Corporate ESG Performance in China: Empirical Evidence from the Green Financial Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone

Does the establishment of pilot zones for green finance reform and innovations in 2017 have an impact on the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) scores of enterprises? This paper selects data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2014-2020 and uses the differences-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the impact of green financial reform on the ESG scores of enterprises. The study shows that the establishment of the Green Financial Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFPZ) policy helps enterprises to obtain higher ESG scores through environmental, social and governance mechanisms. When ESG is measured using environmental, social and governance data, our results suggest that the contribution of green finance reforms to ESG scores is primarily driven by social responsibility scores. The adjustment effect analysis shows that for large enterprises in the GFPZ, the above effects have stronger influence, but there is no significant difference between heavily polluting and non-heavily polluting firms in the GFPZ. Expansive analysis shows that the improvement in ESG scores of enterprises in the GFPZ not only contributes to the green performance of enterprises, but also to their financial performance.