关键词: 交叉上市, ESG表现, 融资约束, 企业价值

Abstract: The 14th Five-Year Plan points out that China’s economic development has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development. The “dual carbon” goal is proposed to promote the comprehensive green transformation of economic and social development. The development of low-carbon economy has become the consensus of globaleconomic development. At the micro level, in the process of promoting sustainable economic development, enterprises, especially listed companies as public companies, need to undertake more environmental protection and social responsibility. The concept of ESG is in line with the development trend of global low-carbon economy and the national strategy of green and sustainable economic and social development. Corporate ESG performance has been paid more and more attention in the international capital market. Manyinvestors have incorporated corporate ESG factors into their organizational planning and investment decision-making processes. In the new development stage, how to improve ESG performance under the encouragement and supervision of policies has become an important issue.
This paper takes China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2020 as the research object to empirically study the impact of cross-listing on ESG performance and its mechanism. The study finds that, first, A+H cross-listed companies have better ESG performance than A-share-only companies, where the larger the company size, the larger the return on assets and free cash flow from equity, and the lower the leverage, the better the company has ESG performance. After endogeneity and robustness testing, the conclusions remain reliable. Second, the mechanism analysis suggests that financing constraints and investor attention have a partial mediating effect between cross-listing and firms’ ESG performance. Cross-listing alleviates firms’ financing constraints and increases investor attention, which in turn contributes to the improvement of firms’ ESG performance. Third, the extended analysis finds that with an increase in cross-listing years, the ESG performance of enterprises is further strengthened. At the same time, the better ESG performance makes the cross-listed companies enhance the enterprise value.
Cross-listing, an external governance factor, provides an important channel for companies to improve their ESG performance. Enterprises have better ESG performance through cross-listing, thus enhancing corporate value. In the context of the development of low-carbon economy, enterprises should strengthen the self-disclosure of ESG performance, fulfill their ESG responsibilities, promote the sustainable development of enterprises, meet the twin goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and contribute to the national strategy. Government departments should strengthen top-level design, formulate perfect ESG disclosure policies, standardize disclosure standards for different industries, and urge enterprises to make correct ESG decisions. Investors should establish the concept of ESG investment and pay attention not only to the financial performance of enterprises, but also to their non-financial performance in environmental protection, social responsibility and corporate governance, so as to promote listed companies to fulfill their ESG responsibilities.
The main contribution of this paper is reflected in the following three aspects: First, it enriches the research on cross-listing and its economic consequences. By studying the impact of cross-listing on ESG performance of enterprises, this paper makes an important supplement to the study of the impact of cross-listing on non-financial performance. Second, it enriches the research on the drivers of enhancing corporate ESG performance. Existing studies have examined the drivers affecting corporate ESG performance mainly from the perspectives of internal corporate governance, digital transformation, M&A transactions, and capital market liberalization. Based on the external governance factor of cross-listing, this paper examines its impact on ESG performance of enterprises, providing an important channel for enterprises to improve ESG performance. Through the intermediary effect analysis, the mechanism of cross-listing affecting the ESG performance of enterprises is revealed. Finally, it enriches the exploration of the feedback function of capital market to the real economy of emerging markets. The vast majority of the literature uses data from listed companies in Europe and the United States as the research sample. This paper uses Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share data to provide literature for the study of ESG performance of listed companies in emerging markets.

Key words: cross-listing, ESG performance, financing constraints, corporate value