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ESG Rating and Northbound Capital Shareholding Preferences: Evidence from China

In the context of achieving carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals and the opening of a capital market in China, an emerging country, the relationship between an ESG rating and northbound capital shareholding preferences (NCSP) is a topic worthy of discussion. In this research, we selected CSI 300-listed companies from 2015 to 2020 as the research object and examined the influence and mechanism of the ESG rating on the NCSP. Our findings showed that the ESG rating is significantly correlated with NCSP, that the ESG rating can dramatically enhance corporate accounting conservatism, and that accounting conservatism has a partial mediating effect between an ESG rating and the NCSP. Furthermore, we noticed that the positive effect of ESG ratings on NCSP among non-state (non-SOE) corporations is more pronounced. The most prominent of the three perspectives of ESG ratings was governance (G). We found that the ESG rating had a stronger impact on the NCSP during the post-COVID-19 period than in the pre-COVID-19 period. In this paper, based on the perspective of accounting conservatism, we enrich the study of ESG ratings in the capital market, provide empirical evidence for the theoretical study of NCSP, and offer a reference for the optimization of the ESG concept and its positioning in corporations. In future studies, expanding the sample range may lead to different interesting findings.