Abstract：As China’s manufacturing industry and economic volume reached the first and second place respectively in 2010, the stable development of economy has become the major strategy of China, where maintaining the sustainable development of enterprises is becoming particularly crucial. In this context, a rapidly increasing numbers of listed companies in China began to issue the sustainability reports and environment, social and governance (ESG) ratings since last decade. This fact also imply that green economy and sustainable development are not only valued by advanced countries, but also by developing economics. China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) proposed the “green credit guidelines” (GCG) in 2012, and issued the “notice on submitting green credit statistic” in 2013. The implement of the “key evaluation indicators for green credit” by CBRC in 2014 representing a further progression of regulatory system as well as a formal application of green credit policy, with the main purpose of promoting green transformation by adjusting the credit structure. However, can green credit policy really promote the green transformation of companies, or facilitating the incremental investment towards green innovation and sustainable development? This paper employed 4516 annual observations of China’s Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) listed companies from 2010 to 2019 as research samples, combing the regression models of difference in difference (DID) and fixed effect (FE) to examine the impact mechanism of GCG on green innovation and ESG performance. We aimed to investigate whether GCG can induce green innovation behavior, as well as exploring the internal mechanism between green innovation and ESG scores. Our research findings are as follows: (1) In fact, GCG has inhibited the green innovation of China’s GEM listed companies; (2) Green innovation of GEM listed companies has an internal mechanism for improving ESG performance; (3) Both political connection strength (PCS) and regional innovation capability (RIC) of GEM listed companies can moderate the positive effect of green innovation on ESG performance. Particularly, the connectedness shows dynamic patterns by two stage general moment method (GMM) regression with instrumental variable, highlighting the risk of PCS and RIC are the shock transmitters from green innovation to sustainable development (ESG) of GEM listed companies.
The main contributions of this research can be summarized from following aspects (1) In terms of theoretical thinking, although existing studies found that the financing structure can affect the innovation activities of enterprises, the internal mechanism is still not clear yet, especially for the impact mechanism on sustainable development performance, our paper provides broader space and practical reference for future research in related fields. This paper further explores the mechanism of GCG affect ESG performance of innovation-driven startups in view of green innovation, which enriching and expanding the sustainable development theory. (2) In terms of research methodology, we manually acquired the patent data, employing the number of green patents authorized to measure the quantity of green innovation and employing the number of forward citations of green patents to measure the quality of green innovation, with an attempt to filling the gaps on previous quantitative research of innovation. (3) In terms of policy practice, this paper analyzes the mechanism of green credit policy on sustainable development indicators from the perspective of green innovation, providing new practical enlightenment and decision-making support. Our study also contributes to a better understanding of the ESG practices for GEM listed companies and startups in emerging countries based on the green credit scenario.
The general direction of green credit policy is to advocating environmental protection, green transformation, as well as sustainable development for enterprises. However, GCG have a negative impact on the green innovation and sustainable development performance of China’s GEM listed companies, which provides new practical inspiration and reflection for deepening the green transformation strategy of China’s manufacturing industry. As for those emerging markets and products, it is a wiser transition to the new business mode, especially considering new investment trends such as green and sustainable performance considerations. Stakeholders of GEM listed companies will confront with the dual pressures from social and environmental regulation, thus they should give priority to adopting long-term and green-development strategies, attaching more importance to the social value of listed companies. Meanwhile, the government also needs to promote entrepreneurial companies to abandoning the traditional business strategy, and adopting the new development strategies to balance the economic, social and environmental benefits. Therefore, China’s GEM listed companies have to make new strategic decision, not only to pursue the new products that can meet the marketing requirements, but also to accommodating the new investment trends and financial policies. Furthermore, investors have also begun to measure the financial value of ESG indicators in their lending strategies, while expecting financial institutions to surpass their main function of maximizing profits from emerging industries. In general, both banks and professional investment institutions should fully adopt the sustainable investment strategies, and firmly believe that improving society and environment is more important than pursuing the short-term profits. That is, investors should focus more on the sustainable financial performance.
陈立峰 郑健壮. 绿色信贷政策能否促进企业绿色创新？——基于730家中国创业板上市公司的研究[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 0, (): 1-.
Chen Lifeng Zheng Jianzhuang. Can Green Credit Policy Promote Enterprise Green Innovation? An Research on 730 China’s GEM Listed Companies. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 0, (): 1-.
