Who cares about environmental, social and governance performance? Family versus non-family firms
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the nexus between family involvement and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance based on socioemotional wealth theory, and it also analyzes the potential influence mechanism.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the categorization of China Stock Market & Accounting Research database, this study divides the Chinese listed firms into family and nonfamily firms and applies multiple regression methods to test the theoretical hypotheses.
Findings
Family involvement can incentivize corporations to enhance corporate transparency, which can in turn enhance their ESG performance. The role of family involvement in bolstering corporate ESG performance is negatively contingent on external financing constraints.
Originality/value
There are insufficient studies on the nexus between family ownership and ESG performance. The findings provide insights into helping policymakers formulate targeted measures to encourage corporations to be more active in promoting ESG initiatives.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Heilongjiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Research Planning Project in China (23ZKT005) and Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education in China (24YJA630091).
Competing interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or nonfinancial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication.
Citation
Zhao, J. and Wang, X. (2024), "Who cares about environmental, social and governance performance? Family versus non-family firms", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/CMS-03-2024-0133
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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