EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The new environmental protection law, political connections and corporate ESG performance

Ni Zhang and Hongjun Han

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2025, vol. 102, issue C

Abstract: Using a difference-in-difference approach based on micro-level environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance data from Chinese companies, this study explores the impact of the New Environmental Protection (NEP) Law implementation on their ESG performance. Findings show that implementing the NEP Law significantly and positively improves the ESG performance of heavily polluting enterprises. Furthermore, political relationships among senior executives have a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between the NEP Law implementation and corporate ESG performance. Heterogeneity tests, the NEP Law has a more pronounced effect on enhancing the ESG performance of state-owned enterprises. The NEP Law significantly improves the ESG performance capabilities of firms in eastern regions, whereas its incentive effect on enterprises in central and western regions is not significant.

Keywords: New environmental protection law; ESG performance; Political connections (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521925001978
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finana:v:102:y:2025:i:c:s1057521925001978

DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2025.104110

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Financial Analysis is currently edited by B.M. Lucey

More articles in International Review of Financial Analysis from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-30
Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:102:y:2025:i:c:s1057521925001978