Abstract: With the rapid promotion of environmental, social, governance (ESG) concepts and the continuous advancement of environmental protection policies in China, corporate environmental performance disclosure and its impact have become a hot topic in academic research. This paper empirically studies the effect of environmental performance disclosure on institutional shareholding, using ESG overall and dimension scores of 1 172 A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2022 sourced from the Bloomberg database. The findings reveal that corporate environmental performance disclosure has a significant positive promoting effect on institutional investors’ shareholding behavior. This result remains robust under various tests, including difference-in-difference regression, alternative independent variables, instrumental variables, Heckman two-step method, varying lag periods, and quantile regression. The effect is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, enterprises with environmental management systems, and heavily polluting enterprises. In addition, the impact of corporate environmental performance disclosure on institutional shareholding mainly promotes short-term institutional investors, with no significant positive effect on long-term institutional investors. This is attributed to the fact that environmental performance disclosure mainly promotes short-term stock price appreciation, but has no significant improvement on firms’ long-term value indicators. This paper suggests that although environmental performance disclosure positively influences overall institutional shareholding, this effect is primarily driven by speculative trading by short-term investors and fails to effectively enhance firms’ long-term value or attract long-term institutional investors. Therefore, stronger guidance from government and regulatory authorities is urgently needed to promote a virtuous interaction between ESG disclosure and sustainable corporate development.

Key words: environmental performance information disclosure, institutional investors, institutional ownership, environmental, social, governance (ESG) rating

摘要： 随着ESG理念的快速推广和中国环境保护政策的不断推进，企业环境绩效信息披露及其带来的影响成为学术研究的热点话题。基于彭博数据库中2009～2022年1 172家A股上市公司ESG总体及各维度评分数据，实证研究了环境绩效信息披露对机构持股行为的影响。研究发现，企业环境绩效信息披露对机构投资者持股比例具有显著正向的促进作用，这一结果在基于双重差分检验、替换自变量、使用工具变量、Heckman两步法、更改滞后期以及使用分位数回归等检验中均保持稳健，且在国有企业、具备环境控制系统企业和重污染企业中更为显著。进一步研究表明，企业环境绩效信息披露对机构持股比例的影响主要作用于对短期机构持股行为的促进，对长期机构投资者没有产生显著正向影响。其内在原因在于，企业环境绩效信息披露促进了股票的短期股价上涨，但对企业长期价值指标无显著改善作用。这表明，企业环境绩效信息披露虽对机构整体持股行为具有显著正向影响，但这种影响主要源于短期机构投资者的信息投机交易，未能有效提升企业长期价值指标或吸引长期机构投资者。因此，企业绿色行为亟需政府和监管部门加强引导，以实现ESG信息披露与企业长期发展的良性互动。

关键词: 环境绩效信息披露, 机构投资者, 持股比例, ESG评分