Dynamic effect analysis.

Following decades of extensive economic development, promoting the transition to greening and decarbonization in economic development have become inevitable choices for controlling environmental pollution and achieving high-quality development in China. Green Credit Guidelines (NIGCG) is a major policy innovation to promote green credit and further improve sustainable economic development. The influence of these guidelines on environmentally friendly enterprises’ sustainable development capacity, proxied by environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), has not yet been discussed. Therefore, this study takes the NIGCG issued in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, and adopts a propensity score matching–difference-in-differences (PSM-DID) model to test whether the NIGCG has affected ESG in environmentally friendly enterprises from 2009 to 2022. Our results indicate that the NIGCG significantly boosts environmentally friendly enterprises’ ESG, and this finding remains robust to a series of tests. In addition, a mediating effect analysis reveals that the NIGCG affects enterprises’ ESG through research and development (R&D) investment, verifying the Porter hypothesis in China. Finally, we determine that the role of NIGCG in promoting ESG is significantly reflected in the non-politically connected enterprises and enterprises in the eastern region. The empirical results suggest that the authorities should stimulate enterprises’ R&D investments through supporting policies, such as tax reimbursement and government subsidies, and formulate differentiated policies according to the characteristics of enterprises and their regions, so as to improve the effect of NIGCG.

历经数十年的高速经济发展，推动经济发展向绿色化、低碳化转型，已成为中国管控环境污染、实现高质量发展的必然选择。《绿色信贷指引》（Green Credit Guidelines, NIGCG）是推动绿色信贷发展、进一步完善可持续经济体系的重大政策创新举措。现有研究尚未探讨该指引对以环境、社会和公司治理（ESG）为代理变量的环保企业可持续发展能力的影响。为此，本研究以2012年发布的《绿色信贷指引》为准自然实验场景，采用倾向得分匹配-双重差分（PSM-DID）模型，检验2009-2022年间该指引对环保企业ESG表现的影响。研究结果显示，《绿色信贷指引》显著提升了环保企业的ESG表现，且该结论通过一系列稳健性检验依然成立。此外，中介效应分析表明，《绿色信贷指引》通过研发（R&D）投入对企业ESG表现产生影响，验证了波特假说（Porter hypothesis）在中国场景下的适用性。最后，本研究发现，《绿色信贷指引》对ESG表现的提振作用在非政治关联企业与东部地区企业中尤为显著。上述实证结果表明，监管部门可通过税收返还、政府补贴等扶持政策激发企业研发投入，并结合企业自身及其所在区域的特征制定差异化政策，以强化《绿色信贷指引》的实施效果。