关键词: 营商环境创新试点, 企业ESG表现, 营商环境优化, 高质量发展

Abstract: Optimizing the business environment is a crucial pillar for promoting high-quality development, constructing a new development pattern, and achieving Chinese-style modernization. Using the business environment innovation pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs a difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the impact of the business environment innovation pilot on corporate ESG performance and its underlying mechanisms. The study finds that the business environment innovation pilot policy contributes to the improvement of corporate ESG performance. Mechanism analysis shows that this improvement is achieved by alleviating tax burdens, enhancing business credit financing, and reducing institutional transaction costs. In other words, the business environment innovation pilot exerts a resource effect that enhances corporate ESG performance. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive effect of the policy on ESG performance is more pronounced in firms operating in environments with high uncertainty, those with non-state ownership, and those with low institutional investor attention. In addition, compared to the corporate governance dimension, the business environment innovation pilot has a more pronounced effect on improving environmental performance and social responsibility fulfillment. This paper sheds light on the economic effects of the business environment innovation pilot policy, providing theoretical support for the government to continuously optimize the business environment, crack the corporate ESG performance improvement dilemma, and achieve high-quality economic development.

Key words: Business Environment Innovation Pilot, Corporate ESG Performance, Business Environment Optimization, High-Quality Development