Do tax incentives matter in promoting corporate ESG performance toward sustainable development?
利用中国上市公司数据，通过双向固定效应模型检验税收激励对企业ESG绩效的促进作用，发现其通过提升技术创新能力发挥作用，且对国企、非污染行业和东部地区企业影响更显著。
Abstract Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reflects the new concept of global sustainable development. This paper, integrating institutional theory, stakeholder theory, and the resource‐based view (RBV), aims to explain how tax incentives enhance corporate ESG performance. Using listed companies in China as the research sample, this paper employs a two‐way fixed effects model to empirically test the causal relationship between the variables. The empirical results show that tax incentives significantly promote overall corporate ESG performance as well as its individual dimensions. Mechanism analysis reveals that tax incentives enhance ESG performance by improving corporate technological innovation capabilities. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the positive impact of tax incentives on ESG performance is more pronounced when firms are state‐owned, from nonpolluting industries, and located in the eastern region. Our findings contribute valuable insights to scholars and industry experts researching the impact of fiscal policies on corporate ESG performance.