With the integration of sustainable development into global economic and social development, ESG information disclosure has become a key channel for enterprises to convey non-financial information. Using 2019 - 2023 panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies, this paper empirically studies the impact of ESG information disclosure quality on corporate financing costs (equity and debt) and explores the moderating effect of property right nature and the mediating effect of information asymmetry. The empirical results are as follows: (1) Improving ESG information disclosure quality can significantly reduce both corporate equity and debt financing costs, and this conclusion holds after robustness tests; (2) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect of reducing financing costs by ESG information disclosure is more obvious in non - state - owned enterprises than in state - owned enterprises; (3) Mechanism tests confirm that ESG information disclosure alleviates information asymmetry between enterprises and investors/creditors, thus lowering corporate financing costs, and information asymmetry plays a partial mediating role. This study enrichIt researches the economic consequences of ESG information disclosure in emerging capital markets, and provides practical references for enterprises to optimize financing strategies, investors and creditors to improve decision - making systems, and regulatory authorities to perfect the ESG information disclosure system.
Yun et al. (Wed,) studied this question.