Research on the Impact of Climate Policy Uncertainty on Corporate Carbon Performance

Abstract

In response to the increasingly severe issue of global climate change, countries around the world have formulated climate policies to drive climate governance initiatives. However, frequent policy changes can exacerbate the policy uncertainty faced by enterprises, thereby affecting their carbon performance. Based on this, this paper takes Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2023 as the research sample to examine the impact of climate policy uncertainty on corporate carbon performance. The research results indicate that climate policy uncertainty has a significant negative impact on corporate carbon performance. This result remains robust after a series of tests, including replacing core explanatory variables, excluding sample data from special years, and altering the clustering level of standard errors. Further analysis reveals that an increase in climate policy uncertainty inhibits corporate carbon performance by weakening the quality of the external financial environment, suppressing corporate green innovation, and hindering corporate digital transformation. Moreover, the inhibitory effect of climate policy uncertainty on corporate carbon performance is more pronounced for enterprises with weaker green awareness among executives, lower levels of policy environmental regulation, lower market competition intensity, and those that are capital- and technology-intensive. This study not only enriches the theoretical discussion on the relationship between climate policy uncertainty and corporate carbon performance but also provides important theoretical foundations and practical guidance for relevant departments in formulating climate policies and for enterprises in improving their carbon performance.