Research on the Impact of Green Credit Policy on Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility

Abstract

Since the 1970s, my country's industrialization process has continued to advance. However, with the improvement of economic level, the contradiction between my country's economic growth and environmental protection has become increasingly prominent. Green development has become an important principle guiding the high-quality development of my country's economy in the new era. In response to increasingly severe environmental problems, my country promulgated the "Green Credit Guidelines" in 2012, requiring financial institutions to include enterprises' environmental performance into credit review standards, implement differentiated credit interest rates for different enterprises, and raise the threshold for corporate loans. Penal high-interest credit is issued to highly polluting enterprises to limit the blind expansion of pollution-intensive industries. Since debt financing from banks and other financial institutions is the main source of funds for Chinese enterprises, changes in credit principles will inevitably affect the business and development strategies of enterprises. Then, can the green credit policy promote high-polluting enterprises to undertake environmental and social responsibilities? This issue deserves our in-depth study. This article designs a quasi-experimental based on the "Green Credit Guidelines" promulgated in 2012, constructs a difference-in-difference model to study the impact of green credit policies on corporate environmental responsibility levels, and analyzes the transmission mechanism of this impact. At the same time, it analyzes the differentiated impact of the "Green Credit Guidelines" on corporate environmental social responsibility under different enterprise sizes, proportions of institutional investors, regional legal environments, and factor market development levels.