A study of the impact of ESG performance on the level of internationalisation of family firms

ESG performance is a comprehensive indicator covering three measurement dimensions of en-vironment, society and corporate governance, which is an important basis for measuring the sustainable development of enterprises and has received wide attention from the society. This paper selects Chinese A-share-listed family firms from 2014 to 2022 as the research object and tries to explore the impact of ESG performance on the international operation level of family firms. It is found that there is a positive correlation between ESG performance and the interna-tional operation level of family firms, which still holds after controlling for endogeneity and conducting robustness tests. In terms of the influence mechanism, the ESG performance of fam-ily firms mainly improves the international operation level of family firms by promoting green innovation, improving business credit and corporate reputation, and alleviating financing con-straints, which to a certain extent provides family firms with a way to deepen their ESG practice and strengthen international competitiveness, which to a certain extent provides a new perspec-tive for family enterprises to deepen ESG practice and strengthen international competitiveness.