Corporate ESG Performance and Shareholding Preference of Institutional Investors

Abstract

With the widespread recognition of ESG investment concept, institutional investors in China's securities market are paying more and more attention to ESG performance of enterprises. However, different types of institutional investors pay different attention to ESG performance, and their shareholding preferences may be different. This paper takes A-share listed companies from 2018 to 2021 as samples to conduct an empirical study. The results show that: on the whole, institutional investors have an obvious ESG preference in China's A-share market, and corporate ESG performance is significantly positively correlated with institutional shareholding ratio. The research on different types of institutional investors shows that independent institutional investors have more obvious ESG preference for shareholding compared with non-independent institutional investors.