Research on the Impact of ESG Disclosure on Corporate Cost of Debt

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_48How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cost of debt; ESG disclosure; Financing constraints

Abstract

Using a sample of A-share listed firms in China, this study examines the impact of ESG disclosure on the corporate cost of debt and explores the underlying mechanism. Baseline regression results show that ESG disclosure significantly reduces firms’ cost of debt. This finding remains robust after a series of tests, including adding additional control variables, employing lagged independent variables, and using an instrumental-variable approach. Channel Analyses suggest that ESG disclosure lowers the cost of debt primarily by mitigating corporate financing constraints. Heterogeneity analyses further show that the negative association between ESG disclosure and the cost of debt is more pronounced among non-state-owned enterprises and firms with lower levels of excessive leverage. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence from the debt capital market on the economic consequences of ESG disclosure and offers meaningful implications for promoting high-quality corporate development.

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  - Wen Lin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/29
TI  - Research on the Impact of ESG Disclosure on Corporate Cost of Debt
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 11th International Conference on Financial Innovation and Economic Development (ICFIED 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 498
EP  - 505
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_48
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_48
ID  - Lin2026
ER  -