Abstract: With the comprehensive promotion of green and low-carbon development, ESG investment is widely emerging globally. Though ESG rating is an important reference basis for ESG investment, ESG rating disagreement caused by information asymmetry between enterprises and rating agencies has become a major problem limiting ESG investment in China's capital market. This paper selects the rating data of seven domestic and foreign ESG rating agencies, and takes Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2021 as the research samples to empirically examine the effect and mechanism of corporate digital transformation on ESG rating disagreement. The test results are as follows: Firstly, the digital transformation of enterprises can alleviate the information asymmetry between enterprises and rating agencies by improving internal information transparency and enhancing external monitoring attention, thus suppressing the disagreement of ESG ratings, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests; Secondly,the inhibition effect of digital transformation on ESG rating disagreement is more significant for private enterprises, high-tech enterprises, non-“Big Four” audited enterprises and enterprises in regions with better digital infrastracture construction; Thirdly, further analysis shows that the inhibition of ESG rating disagreement by the digital transformation of enterprises can weaken the negative impact on China's capital market, i. e., it improves the liquidity of the stocks and reduces the synchronicity of the stock prices, which effectively improves the allocation efficiency of China's capital market. The research in this paper provides concrete ideas for mitigating ESG rating disagreement, which is of practical significance for promoting ESG investment and further promoting China's green and low-carbon development.

Key words: ESG Rating Disagreement, ESG Investment, Digital Transformation, Capital Market

摘要： ESG评级是ESG投资的重要参考,而企业与评级机构间信息不对称所引起的ESG评级分歧成为限制我国资本市场ESG投资的一大难题。本文选取国内外七家ESG评级机构的评级数据,以2015—2021年中国沪深A股上市企业为研究样本,实证检验了企业数字化转型对ESG评级分歧的影响及作用机制,研究结果表明:企业数字化转型通过提升内部信息透明度、增强外部监督关注的渠道抑制了ESG评级分歧;异质性分析表明,民营企业、高新技术企业、非“四大”审计企业和数字基础设施较为完善地区的企业,数字化转型对ESG评级分歧的抑制作用更显著;进一步分析表明,企业数字化转型抑制ESG评级分歧能够弱化其对我国资本市场的负面影响,即提高股票流动性并降低股价同步性,从而有效改善我国资本市场资源配置效率。本文的研究为缓解ESG评级分歧提供了具体思路,对于促进ESG投资并进一步推动我国绿色低碳发展具有现实意义。

关键词: ESG评级分歧, ESG投资, 数字化转型, 资本市场