IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rjapxx/v30y2025i2p551-574.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relationship between SMEs’ ESG performance and value creation in China: the moderating role of government subsidies

Author

Listed:
  • Weidong Zhu
  • Xue Hu
  • Yong Wu
  • Tianjiao Zhang

Abstract

This paper uses Chinese small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a research sample to explore the relationship between environment, social responsibility, governance (ESG) performance and firm value creation and to test the moderating effect of government subsidies. In addition, we classify government subsidies into innovation, social responsibility, and development subsidies using a Biterm Topic Model (BTM) to explore the heterogeneous moderating effects. The results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between ESG performance and value creation in Chinese SMEs. Government subsidies have a significant moderating effect on the inverted U-shaped curve of ESG performance and value creation, and the moderating effect of different government subsidies also varies. An increase in social responsibility subsidies makes the curve inflection point shift to the left, an increase in development subsidies makes the inflection point shift to the right and the curve steeper, and innovation subsidies have no moderating effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Weidong Zhu & Xue Hu & Yong Wu & Tianjiao Zhang, 2025. "Relationship between SMEs’ ESG performance and value creation in China: the moderating role of government subsidies," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2), pages 551-574, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rjapxx:v:30:y:2025:i:2:p:551-574
    DOI: 10.1080/13547860.2024.2305307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13547860.2024.2305307
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13547860.2024.2305307?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

    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:taf:rjapxx:v:30:y:2025:i:2:p:551-574. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rjap .

    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.