基于利益相关者理论，选取2010—2022年中国A股上市公司面板数据为研究样本，利用双向固定效应模型实证分析企业ESG表现对绿色创新质量的影响及作用机制。研究结果表明：企业ESG表现能够显著促进企业绿色创新质量提升，经过工具变量法、PSM检验等一系列稳健性检验，结论依然成立；企业ESG表现对绿色创新的影响具有企业、行业、ESG水平和绿色创新质量异质性，企业ESG表现对大规模企业、非国有企业、非重污染企业、低ESG水平以及高绿色创新质量企业的促进作用更显著；企业ESG表现通过增加内部资金获取、人才集聚和加强外部社会监督促进企业绿色创新质量提升，其中，社会监督的传导作用最强，其次是资金获取，而人才集聚的作用最弱；环境规制在企业ESG表现促进绿色创新质量提升中具有显著负向调节作用。

Against the backdrop of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality”, China is accelerating the construction of a green, low-carbon and circular development economic system.This effort is designed to catalyze a shift in economic development paradigms through the lens of green innovation. While corporate investment in green innovation has seen a sustained increase, and the volume of green innovations has surged, and there are strategic green innovation behaviors funded by patent policies, resulting in enterprises focusing on the quantity of innovation while ignoring the improvement of innovation quality. Therefore, exploring how enterprises can improve the quality of green innovation and realize the "win-win" of economic and environmental benefits has become the focus of current research.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG), as a comprehensive framework for evaluating the sustainable development of enterprises, can significantly enhance investor confidence, improve consumer loyalty, and then bring economic benefits and social influence to enterprises. Its disclosure level is also increasing year by year. Does enterprise ESG performance have a positive impact on the quality of green innovation? Is the impact heterogeneous among different types of enterprises? What is the underlying mechanism of action? Answering the above questions is helpful to grasp the mechanism of ESG performance of enterprises as a whole, and improve the quality of green innovation of enterprises.
Following stakeholder theory, this study selects panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2021 as the research sample, and uses a two-way fixed effects model to empirically analyze the impact and mechanism of enterprise ESG performance on the quality of green innovation. It employs the patent knowledge breadth method to measure the quality of green innovation as the dependent variable enterprises, and uses the Huazhong ESG rating index to reflect the ESG performance of Chinese listed companies as the explanatory variable. The results show that enterprise ESG performance can significantly promote the green innovation quality. After a series of robustness tests such as instrumental variable method and PSM test, the conclusion still holds true. Moreover, the impact of enterprise ESG performance on green innovation varies across enterprises, industries, ESG levels, and green innovation quality. Corporate ESG performance has a more significant promoting effect on large-scale, non-state-owned enterprises, non heavy polluting enterprises, low ESG levels, and high green innovation quality enterprises. Furthermore, the ESG performance of enterprise promotes the improvement of green innovation quality by increasing internal funding acquisition, talent agglomeration, and strengthening external social supervision. Among them, the transmission effect of social supervision is the strongest, followed by fund acquisition, while the role of talent agglomeration is the weakest. Environmental regulations have a significant negative moderating effect on promoting the improvement of green innovation quality in ESG performance.
Drawing from the conclusions presented, this study offers a series of strategic recommendations. Enterprises are encouraged to, firstly, establish a sustainable development oriented ESG disclosure system, an ESG data collection and monitoring systems based on international standards, a special ESG management committee, and an internal evaluation mechanism. Secondly, differentiated strategies should be adopted according to the characteristics of different enterprises. For example, small-scale enterprises should strengthen cooperation with universities and research institutions; state-owned enterprises can further clarify property rights and management responsibilities; heavy polluting enterprises should develop and apply advanced emission reduction technologies and clean energy; enterprises with high ESG levels can participate in technical cooperation R&D projects and technical forums; low green innovation quality enterprises should establish an environmental and social responsibility office or team to focus on monitoring and improving ESG performance. The government needs to strengthen the synergy of environmental policies and encourage enterprises to improve their ESG performance. Finally, in order to improve the quality of green innovation, enterprises can increase environmental protection awareness to foster a culture of environmental stewardship, use multi-channel financing to reduce costs, and emphasize the utilization of talent agglomeration effect.