HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1658964
Factors influencing of ESG Performance in reducing Carbon Emission: Evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan, China
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Carbon emission reduction is crucial to high-quality development and the realization of China's "dual-carbon" goal. Based on the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2023, the article examines the effect and mechanism of ESG performance on corporate carbon emission intensity. The results show that high ESG performance has a significant effect on corporate carbon emission reduction, and this conclusion still holds after robustness test and endogenous analysis. The potential mechanism suggests that ESG performance significantly reduces carbon emission by improving the level of green technology innovation and total factor productivity. The heterogeneity test indicates that the carbon intensity reduction effect of ESG performance improvement is particularly pronounced in manufacturing enterprises, enterprises located in Eastern China, and state-owned enterprises. The results of the study conclude that companies should deeply integrate their own strategic blueprints with ESG concepts to improve the level of green technological innovation and total factor productivity, thus promoting China's accelerated realization of carbon reduction and emission reduction goals.
Keywords: ESG performance, technological innovation, Efficiency, Carbon reduction, sustainable development
Received: 03 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang and Yaozu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xueer Zhang, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan, China
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