企业可持续发展的司法倒逼效应研究 ——基于环保法庭设立的发现

Research on the Judicial Forcing Effect on Corporate Sustainable Development: Evidence from the Establishment of Environmental Courts

摘要:

企业环境成本外部化的固有倾向与生态环境的公共物品属性，决定了单纯依赖企业自律难以实现可持续发展目标。环境司法专门化正是通过法治化路径将社会成本转化为企业决策的刚性约束，为破解“绿色转型困境”提供了制度性解决方案。本文以环保法庭设立为准自然实验，利用2011—2023年A股上市公司数据，构建双重差分模型考察验证司法倒逼机制对企业可持续发展的作用路径。研究发现：①环保法庭设立能够显著提高企业的ESG表现，且这一效应具有较强的持续性；②当企业属于重污染行业、国有企业、所处地区司法独立性较高或公众环境关注度较高时，环境司法改革对企业ESG表现的提升效应更强；③机制检验发现，环保法庭设立直接提高了地区环境司法效率，能够从源头倒逼企业进行绿色转型，提高可持续发展能力，从而改善企业ESG表现；④分项效应检验发现，环保法庭设立对企业ESG表现的积极效应源于对企业环境（E）、社会（S）和治理（G）各维度表现的全面促进，但相对而言，对环境（E）维度的积极影响占主导作用，对社会（S）维度的促进作用相对偏弱，对治理（G）维度的影响持续性较差，同时呈现出一定的滞后。本文研究对环境规制理论作出了有益补充，也为完善生态文明制度体系建设提供了微观证据。

Abstract:

The inherent tendency of enterprises to externalize environmental costs and the public goods attribute of the ecological environment determine that it is difficult to achieve sustainable development goals merely by relying on corporate self-discipline. Through legal means, the specialization of environmental judicature converts social costs into rigid constraints on corporate decision-making, thus offering an institutional solution to break through the dilemma of green transformation. Taking the establishment of environmental courts as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs the data of A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2023 and constructs a difference-in-differences model to investigate and verify the action path of the judicial forcing mechanism on corporate sustainable development.The research conclusions are as follows:①The establishment of environmental courts can significantly boost corporate ESG performance, and this effect features strong persistence. ②The improvement effect of environmental judicial reform on corporate ESG performance is more prominent among enterprises in heavily polluting industries, state-owned enterprises, as well as enterprises located in regions with higher judicial independence and higher public attention to environmental issues. ③Mechanism tests reveal that the establishment of environmental courts directly improves regional environmental judicial efficiency, forces enterprises to pursue green transformation from the source, enhances their sustainable development capacity, and consequently optimizes corporate ESG performance. ④Sub-dimensional effect tests show that the positive influence of environmental courts on corporate ESG performance derives from the all-round promotion of corporate environmental (E), social (S) and governance (G) performance. Comparatively speaking, the positive impact on the environmental (E) dimension plays a leading role, the promotion effect on the social (S) dimension is relatively weak, while the impact on the governance (G) dimension is less persistent and presents a certain time lag.This study effectively supplements the theories of environmental regulation, and also provides micro empirical evidence for perfecting the construction of ecological civilization institutional system.