This study shows a link between board chairs’ early-life famine experiences and ESG performance, suggesting high economic policy uncertainty exacerbates the effect.
This study investigates the influence of board chairs' early-life famine experiences on firms' ESG performance. Using China's Great Famine (1959–1961) context, we find that board chairs reduce corporate ESG engagement if ever experienced the famine during childhood and adolescence. The firms' ESG performance decreases with the famine severity of the chairs' birthplace. Consistent with the imprinting theory, this adverse impact of famine experience is mitigated when board chairs left their birthplace. We further show that the negative relationship between board chairs' famine experience and firms' ESG performance is more pronounced when the economic policy uncertainty is high or if the firm is not state-owned. These results are consistent with our conjecture that severe famine experience leave "risk aversion" and "political apathy" imprints on the board chairs, leading them less willing to invest in ESG.
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Yu et al. (2025) studied this question.
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