Is post-event accountability effective-analysis of the effect and mechanism of environmental auditing on corporate ESG impacts

Abstract

In the face of increasingly severe environmental protection pressures, enterprises need to balance the relationship between economic pressure and environmental responsibility. As an ex-post environmental policy, environmental auditing may beKey regulatory role in realizing this balance, which comprehensively supervises the production, operation and emission performance of enterprises, aims to assess and ensure the effective implementation of ecological protection measures, and becomes a special way of “post-event accountability” in the process of corporate environmental management. Based on the panel data of A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2021, the article analyzes the impact of environmental auditing on corporate ESG performance and its internal mechanism using a multi-period double-difference model.The results of the study show that: firstly, environmental auditing can help enterprises improve their ESG performance and make the environmental governance method of “post-event accountability” practicable; Secondly, environmental auditing has a positive impact on corporate ESG through inhibition, regulation and supervision effects, i.e., it can inhibit corporate “greenwashing” behavior and enhance the authenticity of environmental information disclosure; regulate corporate management and reduce the frequency of violations; strengthen public supervision duties and prompt the media to pay more attention to corporate environmental performance; and lastly, environmental auditing has a more obvious effect on the enhancement of ESG performance of state-owned enterprises and small-scale enterprises. The findings of this paper enrich the green governance effect of eco-auditing and expand the research on the impact of corporate ESG performance.