Do environmental, social, and governance scores improve green innovation? Empirical evidence from Chinese-listed companies

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) has become a buzzword in investment circles as ecological damage and climate warming occur. ESG assessment is one of the important institutions of the green financial system, which plays a significant part in boosting corporate green development. We use the number of green patent applications and green patent citations to measure corporate green innovation and analyze the micro-green effects of the ESG score system using the panel fixed effects models, which means that we explore the impact of the ESG scores on corporate green innovation performance, the specific mechanism of this effect, and the asymmetry of this impact under different moderation effects by using Chinese listed A-shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010–2019 as our research sample. We find that ESG positively affects corporate green innovation; the higher the ESG evaluation, the more it improves firms’ green innovation performance. The promotion effect is reflected quantitatively and qualitatively and remains valid after several robustness tests. In addition, the contribution of ESG to corporate green innovation is achieved through two main paths improving corporate investment efficiency and government-enterprise relations. Corporate black attributes inhibit the contribution of ESG to green innovation, while green attributes strengthen the contribution of ESG to green innovation performance. Our study demonstrates the importance of corporate participation in environmental, social, and governance practices for corporate green innovation, which is beneficial for achieving win-win environmental, social, and economic results. Furthermore, our research completes the research on the effects of corporate green performance and green finance. It can provide empirical references for promoting corporate green development and improving the ESG evaluation system.