Review of research on ESG performance, executive background and firm value

Abstract

Under the background of green development theory and high-quality development, it is of great significance to promote enterprises to practice ESG development concept. By combing the relevant literature, this paper finds that foreign scholars have studied ESG earlier than domestic scholars, and the research results are also more. Current studies on ESG performance and enterprise value mainly focus on the impact of environment, social responsibility and corporate governance on enterprise value. Few studies focus on the overall impact of ESG performance on enterprise value, and scholars have not reached a consensus on the impact of ESG performance on enterprise value. Some scholars put forward that ESG is positively correlated with enterprise value, some scholars believe that there is no significant relationship between ESG components and enterprise value, and some scholars believe that ESG is not correlated with enterprise value. The differences in the results may be due to differences in how ESG performance is measured, or it may be due to the different countries and stages of development of the companies studied. Most foreign studies are based on enterprises in developed markets, and there is relatively little research on enterprises in emerging markets like China. In addition, few studies have addressed the transmission mechanism of the role of ESG performance and firm value, let alone considered the mediating role of executive background. Therefore, this paper studies the relationship between ESG performance and firm value of listed companies under the background of China's market economy. Secondly, it introduces the background of senior executives to explore whether the background of senior executives plays a certain role in the relationship between the two.