ESG Disclosure Quality and Cost of Debt in Chinese A Shares under Ownership Heterogeneity

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_68How to use a DOI?

Keywords

ESG Disclosure Quality; Cost of Debt; Ownership Heterogeneity; Ownership Concentration; Corporate Growth

Abstract

Against the backdrop of increasingly stringent global disclosure regimes for sustainable development, this study investigates the mechanism through which the quality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure influences corporate costs of debt. Using A-share listed firms in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing from 2019 to 2024 as the sample, the analysis reveals pronounced ownership heterogeneity in the ESG disclosure – cost of debt relationship. Specifically, a higher quality of ESG disclosure is significantly associated with lower cost of debt financing for state-owned enterprises, whereas no significant relationship is observed for non-state-owned enterprises. The underlying mechanism for state-owned firms involves the coordinated alignment of government implicit guarantees and policy financing instruments, which allows high-quality ESG disclosure to channel firms toward lower-cost funding sources such as green credit. Non-state-owned firms face greater difficulty in converting disclosure advantages into financing benefits owing to limited information credibility and prevailing financing constraints. Greater ownership concentration attenuates the effect of ESG disclosure on financing costs in both ownership types, although the transmission channels differ. Finally, the moderating role of firm growth is significant only for state-owned enterprises. By integrating information disclosure quality into the analysis of cost of debt, this study delineates the institutional boundaries of ESG value realization from the information supply perspective and offers implications for differentiated regulation and the optimization of corporate financing strategies.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hongyi Lu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/30
TI  - ESG Disclosure Quality and Cost of Debt in Chinese A Shares under Ownership Heterogeneity
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 8th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 661
EP  - 673
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_68
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_68
ID  - Lu2026
ER  -