Sustainability needs trust: The role of social trust in driving corporate ESG performance

IF 7.9 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Analysis and Policy Pub Date : 2025-05-06 DOI:10.1016/j.eap.2025.05.007

Rui Fan , Yuxuan Xu , Liying Yu , Ran Qiu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We study whether greater social trust is associated with better corporate environment, social and governance (ESG) performance. Employing data from Chinese listed companies between 2010 and 2022, this study observes the significantly positive effect of social trust on ESG performance, and there exists a complementary effect between social trust and legal environment. Mechanism examination reveals that social trust promotes ESG by enhancing public environmental concern and improving corporate compliance. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive impact of social trust is more pronounced in regions with strong Confucian cultural atmosphere, firms facing fierce industry competition, and firms with low internal control quality. Moreover, social trust can strengthen the company’s ability to acquire resources from stakeholders and inhibit ESG greenwashing, which further supports social norm and network theory. Our research enriches studies regarding drivers of ESG performance from the informal institutional perspective and provides references for regulators in terms of ESG construction.

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可持续发展需要信任：社会信任在推动企业ESG绩效中的作用

我们研究更高的社会信任是否与更好的企业环境、社会和治理（ESG）绩效相关。本研究采用2010 - 2022年中国上市公司数据，观察到社会信任对ESG绩效的显著正向影响，社会信任与法律环境之间存在互补效应。机制检验表明，社会信任通过增强公众对环境的关注和提高企业的合规性来促进环境治理。异质性分析表明，在儒家文化氛围浓厚、行业竞争激烈和内部控制质量较低的地区，社会信任的正向影响更为显著。此外，社会信任可以增强公司向利益相关者获取资源的能力，抑制ESG洗绿，这进一步支持了社会规范和网络理论。我们的研究丰富了非正式制度视角下ESG绩效驱动因素的研究，为监管机构在ESG建设方面提供了参考。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Economic Analysis and Policy ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

9.80

自引率

9.20%

发文量

231

审稿时长

93 days

期刊介绍： Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.