随着生态经济与可持续发展的呼声越来越强烈，环境、社会和治理（ESG）投资的概念和实践正在中国资本市场上普及。企业ESG表现是财务信息之外的重要补充，在资产定价中发挥着越来越重要的作用。我国企业对于债务融资的依赖度一直较高，降低债务成本、解决“融资贵”的问题具有重要的现实意义。目前我国关于ESG的文献多集中在ESG对企业价值及企业风险的影响，而ESG与债务成本关系的研究尚不完备。本研究从微观企业出发，分析ESG表现对债务融资成本的影响，并探究其内在的影响机制。本文利用2015-2020年我国A股非金融上市公司的面板数据，通过实证分析，发现在控制其他条件不变的情况下，企业ESG表现与债务融资成本负相关。具体来说，更好的ESG绩效缓解了公司与债权人之间的信息不对称，表明企业走绿色发展、可持续发展的道路，向市场传递了正面积极的信号，同时也对社会和环境产生了正外部性，改善了与利益相关者的关系，因而债权人会对ESG水平高的企业收取更低的风险溢价，降低了其债务融资成本。另外，本文还依据企业的股权性质和外部信息环境进行了分组回归，发现在非国企及分析师关注度较低的企业，ESG表现对债务成本有着更大更显著的抑制作用。作用机制方面，本文验证了公司声誉和经营风险的中介效应，优秀的ESG表现可以提升企业声誉、降低经营风险，从而降低了债务融资成本。为了确保回归结果可靠，本文进行了稳健性检验，通过改变被解释变量的测量方法、改变解释变量的测量方法、工具变量法处理内生性等方式，发现ESG评级对债务成本的降低作用依然显著。本文的研究在理论层面上丰富了公司ESG实践与债务融资交叉领域的相关文献，在现实层面上对企业管理者、债权人、监管者有一定的指导作用。基于回归结果，本文鼓励公司自主提高ESG披露质量、加强ESG实践工作，提示贷款人将ESG信息整合到公司债务定价的考虑因素中，建议监管部门建立健全ESG披露体系。
With the booming development of an ecological and sustainable economy and society, the concept and practice of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments are being popularized in the capital market of China. ESG performance is an important supplement to financial information and plays an increasingly significant role in asset pricing. Compared to firms in the US and other developed countries, Chinese firms rely more on debt financing. It is of great practical significance to reduce the cost of debt and make lending affordable to businesses. Theoretical and empirical work researchers in corporate finance have hypothesized and documented links between ESG activities and firm value and risk, while the research on the impact of ESG on debt financing is not complete. This study analyzes the impact of ESG performance on debt cost, and explores the internal impact mechanism.In this paper, we use the panel data of A-share non-financial listed companies from 2015 to 2020. Through empirical analysis, we find that there is a significant negative relationship between ESG performance and the cost of corporate debt financing when other conditions remain unchanged. To be specific, better ESG performance not only alleviates the information asymmetry between the company and creditors, but also indicates that the enterprise goes along a road of green and sustainable development, which sends a positive signal to the market. Meanwhile, it generates positive externality benefiting society and environment, improving stakeholder relations. Therefore, companies with good ESG performance are charged a lower risk premium and benefit from a lower cost of debt. Moreover, the grouping regression according to the nature of ownership and analyst coverage shows that ESG performance has a greater inhibitory effect on debt cost in non-state enterprises and enterprises with low analyst attention. In terms of its influential mechanism, we verify the intermediary effect of corporate reputation and business risk through three-step mediated regression method. Excellent ESG performance can improve corporate reputation and reduce business risk, thus reducing the cost of debt financing. The result holds after robustness checks and endogeneity concerns.The research enriches the literature in the field of corporate ESG practice and debt financing in theory. In addition, we make recommendations to enterprise managers, creditors and regulators in practice. This paper encourages companies to strengthen ESG practice and prompts lenders to view ESG factors as key considerations to be included in the process of corporate debt pricing. At the same time, it also urges regulatory departments to establish a sound ESG evaluation system.
