Government environmental initiatives, managerial environmental attention, and corporate ESG performance: from the perspective of attention-based View

Using firm-level data in China from 2011–2022, we employ text analysis and machine learning methods to construct government environmental initiatives (GEI) index, and examine the impact of GEI on corporate environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Based on attention-based view (ABV), we find that GEI increases corporate ESG performance by promoting managerial environmental attention (MEA), especially in high-polluting industries and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Furthermore, the results remain unchanged after robustness tests. Our findings imply that GEI serves as an effective means for advancing the sustainable development of listed companies.