The "Say-Do Gap" in Corporate ESG: Uncovering the Drivers of Decoupling Behavior

Under China's "dual-carbon" push, ESG has become a passport—and, at times, a mask. Reports grow thicker, roadshow slides glow brighter, yet verifiable change can remain stubbornly thin. Is this hypocrisy, or simply cold arithmetic under pressure? This paper (deliberately non-empirical) treats ESG decoupling—the persistent gap between "what is said" and "what is done"—less as a moral verdict and more as a strategic adaptation to a particular payoff structure. A pressure–incentives–capabilities–verifiability logic is proposed. Institutional and stakeholder pressure makes visible responsiveness unavoidable; market incentives reward legible commitments with reputational and financing gains; resource and capability constraints inflate the near-term cost of real operational transformation; and verifiability decides whether misalignment is quietly tolerated or loudly punished. Time is not neutral. Commitments are often front-loaded, execution deferred—especially around financing windows and rating cycles. Boundaries are not innocent either: responsibility may be shifted to subsidiaries or supply chains where accountability blurs and inspection is expensive. When verification tightens, the equilibrium can snap back—sometimes suddenly, sometimes painfully. The paper closes by turning mechanism into levers: strengthen auditability and traceability, pin down accountability boundaries, and build capabilities that make promises engineerable rather than merely poetic.