When Green Speaks: Corporate Biodiversity Attention and Sustainable Development Performance

As a core support for ecosystem service functions, biodiversity profoundly affects corporate resource acquisition and long-term value creation. Based on data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2023, this paper constructs a biodiversity attention dictionary using textual analysis and measures corporate biodiversity attention by the number of sentences containing biodiversity-related terms in annual reports. It empirically examines the impact of corporate biodiversity attention on sustainable development performance and its underlying mechanisms. This study demonstrates that corporate biodiversity attention significantly enhances sustainable development performance. Mechanism analysis reveals that corporate biodiversity attention primarily promotes sustainable development performance through three pathways: alleviating financing constraints, fostering green technology innovation, and accelerating digital transformation. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that this positive effect is more pronounced in heavily polluting industries, non-high-tech enterprises, regulated industries, and firms with a high market share. Economic consequence analysis shows that improvements in corporate sustainable development performance significantly enhance corporate resilience, enabling stable operations and rapid recovery under external shocks. Therefore, firms should strengthen biodiversity disclosure, integrate biodiversity into strategic decision-making frameworks, and promote the coordinated advancement of green technology innovation and digital transformation. Regulatory authorities should accelerate the development of unified disclosure standards and implement differentiated policy guidance to facilitate the high-quality development of enterprises in the process of green transition.