IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v69y2024ipas1544612324010961.html

Does the ESG rating promote common prosperity within enterprises?

Author

Listed:
  • Ma, Ning
  • Ma, Xue

Abstract

This article analyzes the effect of ESG ratings on fostering common prosperity within companies in China's capital market, focusing on non-financial and insurance sectors. The study finds that higher corporate ESG ratings significantly enhance common prosperity within firms, primarily by easing corporate debt financing constraints. Furthermore, the positive impact of ESG ratings on common prosperity is stronger in non-state-owned and larger enterprises. This research broadens the understanding of corporate ESG's role from a micro perspective and offers evidence on advancing common prosperity in the modern era.

Suggested Citation

  • Ma, Ning & Ma, Xue, 2024. "Does the ESG rating promote common prosperity within enterprises?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:69:y:2024:i:pa:s1544612324010961
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106066
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612324010961
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2024.106066?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shakil, Mohammad Hassan, 2021. "Environmental, social and governance performance and financial risk: Moderating role of ESG controversies and board gender diversity," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Li, Hao & Guo, Hui & Hao, Xinyao & Zhang, Xuan, 2023. "The ESG rating, spillover of ESG ratings, and stock return: Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Gao, Ning & Jiang, Wei & Jin, Jiaxu, 2024. "Unravelling investors’ diverging responses to U.S. firms' global ESG incidents," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Rajna Gibson Brandon & Philipp Krueger & Peter Steffen Schmidt, 2021. "ESG Rating Disagreement and Stock Returns," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(4), pages 104-127, October.
    5. Broadstock, David C. & Chan, Kalok & Cheng, Louis T.W. & Wang, Xiaowei, 2021. "The role of ESG performance during times of financial crisis: Evidence from COVID-19 in China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    6. Wong, Woei Chyuan & Batten, Jonathan A. & Ahmad, Abd Halim & Mohamed-Arshad, Shamsul Bahrain & Nordin, Sabariah & Adzis, Azira Abdul, 2021. "Does ESG certification add firm value?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    7. Wang, Jianli & Wang, Shaolin & Dong, Minghua & Wang, Hongxia, 2024. "ESG rating disagreement and stock returns: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    8. Wang, Haijun & Jiao, Shuaipeng & Bu, Kun & Wang, Yebin & Wang, Yaxian, 2023. "Digital transformation and manufacturing companies’ ESG responsibility performance," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PB).
    9. He, Feng & Qin, Shuqi & Liu, Yuanyuan & Wu, Ji (George), 2022. "CSR and idiosyncratic risk: Evidence from ESG information disclosure," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    10. Avramov, Doron & Cheng, Si & Lioui, Abraham & Tarelli, Andrea, 2022. "Sustainable investing with ESG rating uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 642-664.
    11. Zhu, Bo & Wang, Yansen, 2024. "Does social trust affect firms' ESG performance?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    12. Ting-Ting Li & Kai Wang & Toshiyuki Sueyoshi & Derek D. Wang, 2021. "ESG: Research Progress and Future Prospects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-28, October.
    13. Tamas Barko & Martijn Cremers & Luc Renneboog, 2022. "Shareholder Engagement on Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(2), pages 777-812, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Yandong & Lv, Fei & Liu, Fang & Wang, Yan & Chai, Siyu, 2025. "Can party organization building promote common prosperity within Enterprises? Mechanism analysis of labor force allocation efficiency," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    2. Kai-di Liu & Minghui Jin & Liang Cheng, 2025. "County green transformation: how does gross ecosystem product assessment promote common prosperity?," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-15, December.
    3. Cai, Yidan & Huang, Xinjian, 2025. "Can good ESG performance contribute to corporate common prosperity?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yu, Haixu & Liang, Chuanyu & Liu, Zhaohua & Wang, He, 2023. "News-based ESG sentiment and stock price crash risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    2. Muck, Matthias & Schmidl, Thomas, 2024. "Comparing ESG score weighting approaches and stock performance differentiation," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(PB).
    3. Zhonghua Cheng & Lele Han, 2025. "Environmental and social governance performance and enterprise total factor productivity," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 1411-1428, April.
    4. Du, Jiayu & Zhu, Rui & Ye, Qiang, 2025. "Managers' overconfidence, institutional investors' shareholding, and corporate ESG performance," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    5. Liu, Xiangqiang & Liu, Jiayi & Liu, Jia & Zhai, Qiong, 2024. "Can investor-firm interactions mitigate ESG rating divergence? Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    6. Massimo Postiglione & Cristian Carini & Alberto Falini, 2024. "ESG and firm value: A hybrid literature review on cost of capital implications from Scopus database," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(6), pages 6457-6480, November.
    7. Mohamed Marie & Baolei Qi & Ali Meftah Gerged & Haitham Nobanee, 2024. "Exploring Environmental, Social and Governance research in the wake of COVID‐19: A bibliometric analysis of current trends and recommendations for future research," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(6), pages 6131-6149, November.
    8. Tu, Qiang & Zuo, Limei & Liang, Anran & Yao, Ye & Liu, Diyi, 2025. "Does ESG rating divergence decrease enterprise productivity? Evidence from China," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(PB).
    9. Wang, Wenjiao & Sun, Ziyuan & Wang, Lan, 2025. "Does ESG rating divergence exacerbate management tone manipulation? − Empirical evidence based on MD&A text," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    10. Deng, Xiang & Li, Weihao & Ren, Xiaohang, 2023. "More sustainable, more productive: Evidence from ESG ratings and total factor productivity among listed Chinese firms," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    11. Lou, Zhukun & Li, Sujie & Tong, Jingyi & Zhao, Jing, 2025. "ESG rating disagreement and the cost of equity capital," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    12. Wang, Shaolin & Cheng, Ho Cheung & Wang, Jianli & Yick, Ho Yin, 2025. "The performance of ESG portfolios: Evidence from the Chinese market under COVID-19," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    13. Qian Ding & Jianbai Huang & Jinyu Chen & Ding Wang, 2025. "ESG peer effects and corporate financial distress: An executive social network perspective," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(3), pages 2284-2310, July.
    14. Mongkhol Moolkham, 2025. "SET ESG ratings and firm value: The new sustainability performance assessment tool in Thailand," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 20(2), pages 1-23, February.
    15. Xiao, Zhongyi & Shum, Wai Yan & Lai, Fujun & Xiang, Cheng, 2025. "How do firms respond to divergent ESG ratings? The perspective of green innovation," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Guo, Chun & Luo, Jingbo, 2026. "Green supply chain management and ESG rating divergence: A quasi-natural experiment in China," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    17. Fuxiu Jiang & Jia Ma & Xiaojia Zheng, 2025. "Multiple large shareholders and ESG performance: Evidence from the cost‐sharing and resource‐provision view," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 65(2), pages 1309-1346, June.
    18. Li, Yunzhong & Zhao, Yu & Ye, Chengfang & Li, Xiaofan & Tao, Yunqing, 2024. "ESG ratings and the cost of equity capital in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    19. Li Meiyi & Gan Yufei, 2025. "More Philanthropy, More Consistency? Examining the Impact of Corporate Charitable Donations on ESG Rating Uncertainty," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-21.
    20. Horky, Florian & Pasquali, Andrea & Magazzino, Cosimo, 2024. "ESG rating disagreement portfolios – Evidence from the EuroStoxx 600," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(PA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:finlet:v:69:y:2024:i:pa:s1544612324010961. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/frl .

    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.