School of Accountancy, Shandong Youth University of Political Science, Shandong, China.
School of Law, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China.
PLoS One. 2023 Oct 19;18(10):e0292286. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292286. eCollection 2023.
Public procurement is an important bridge between public demand and market supply and may affect corporate behavior. However, in the advocacy of sustainable development, the extant research has rarely combined sustainable public procurement (SPP) with corporate ESG performance, to explore whether governments have contributed to the development of sustainable corporate performance through their sustainable procurement activities. This paper fills in the gap by matching the actual implementation of SPP of 42,369 projects in China over 2015~2020 with 20,125 corporate ESG performance data, to analyze the relationship between SPP implementation and corporate ESG performance. The results show that the implementation of SPP has a significant positive impact on corporate ESG performance. Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact is stronger in China's eastern and central regions than in other regions, and corporates at a mature stage are more likely to follow the government sustainable behavior. In addition, the implementation of SPP has a long-term effect on corporate ESG performance. The above findings have important policy implications: firstly, there is a better role for government to play as the "invisible hand", to participate in the market economy; Specifically, SPP policy should be added to government policy tool box to improve corporate ESG performance in addition to disclosure requirement, and the SPP policy employed should in particular attend to the "missing sectors" of sustainability in SPP for the good of corporate ESG; secondly, the government should implement differentiated policies tailored to the region's economic development conditions and corporate development characteristics; thirdly, a long-term evaluation mechanism should be established so that the government can play a more long-term demonstration and leading role.
政府采购是公共需求与市场供给之间的重要桥梁，可能会影响企业行为。然而，在倡导可持续发展的过程中，现有研究很少将可持续公共采购（SPP）与企业的 ESG 绩效结合起来，以探讨政府是否通过其可持续采购活动为可持续企业绩效的发展做出了贡献。本文通过匹配 2015 年至 2020 年中国 42369 个项目的 SPP 实际实施情况与 20125 家企业的 ESG 绩效数据，填补了这一空白，分析了 SPP 实施与企业 ESG 绩效之间的关系。结果表明，SPP 的实施对企业 ESG 绩效有显著的积极影响。进一步的异质性分析表明，这种影响在东部和中部地区比其他地区更强，成熟阶段的企业更有可能效仿政府的可持续行为。此外，SPP 的实施对企业 ESG 绩效具有长期影响。上述发现具有重要的政策意义：首先，政府作为“看不见的手”，在参与市场经济方面可以发挥更好的作用；具体而言，除了披露要求外，政府还应将 SPP 政策纳入政府政策工具箱，以提高企业的 ESG 绩效，特别是要关注 SPP 中可持续性的“缺失领域”，以促进企业的 ESG；其次，政府应根据地区经济发展条件和企业发展特点，实施差异化政策；第三，应建立长期评估机制，使政府能够发挥更长期的示范和领导作用。
