State-owned shareholders’ participation and environmental, social, and governance performance of private firms: evidence from China
Xingquan Yang,
Kexin Zhang,
Pengfei Gao and
Zheng Yang
Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 26, 3503-3524
Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between state-owned shareholders’ participation and the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance of private firms. Based on a sample of Chinese private firms between 2009 and 2022, we find that state-owned shareholders’ participation can significantly improve the ESG performance of private firms. Our mechanism tests suggest that state-owned shareholders play a role in improving the ESG performance of private firms through resource support and governance supervision. Moreover, the positive effect of state-owned shareholders’ participation on ESG performance is more significant if private firms have lower carbon emission intensity and in industries with a higher degree of competition. We also find that state-owned shareholders’ participation effectively increases firm value while improving the ESG performance of private firms. Our results are robust after a series of endogenous and robustness tests. The findings of our study enrich the existing research on the economic consequences of state-owned shareholders’ participation in private firms and the factors influencing corporate ESG performance.
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2024.2337797 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
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:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:26:p:3503-3524
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20
DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2337797
Access Statistics for this article
Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips
More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().