Corporate ESG Performance and New Quality Productive Forces: Based on Signaling Theory

Amid the new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation, new quality productive forces (NQPFs) have become the key to a firm’s sustainable development. To help enterprises accelerate the improvement of their NQPFs, grounded in signaling theory, this paper takes data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2024 as the research sample and uses a two-way fixed effects model to empirically examine whether and how superior ESG performance, serving as a high-quality signal, fosters NQPFs. The results show the following. There is a significant positive relationship between corporate ESG performance and NQPFs. This finding remains robust across a series of checks, including replacing the key explanatory variable, removing outlier years and cities, and addressing endogenous problems through instrumental-variable estimation. Heterogeneity tests reveal that the effect is more pronounced among non-state-owned firms and those located in Northeast China, whereas it is statistically insignificant for firms in Western China. Mechanism analysis indicates that ESG performance boosts NQPFs indirectly by raising analyst attention and investor confidence. Overall, this paper not only enriches research perspectives on the relationship between corporate ESG performance and NQPFs, but also offers theoretical support and practical reference for the formulation of corporate ESG strategies and the precise policy-making of governments.