New Infrastructure Construction, Institutional Pressure, and Sustainable Development Performance: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Enterprises

The rapid development of new infrastructure has profoundly influenced the development pattern of enterprises. Also, it provides new opportunities for manufacturing enterprises to achieve greater sustainable development performance (SDP). Based on data on manufacturing enterprises from 2012 to 2022, this study combines financial performance and ESG performance to measure the SDP of enterprises and discusses the mechanism through which new infrastructure construction (NIC) affects SDP. The results indicate that NIC significantly promotes the financial performance and ESG performance of enterprises, thereby promoting their SDP. This conclusion remains robust after rigorous testing for endogeneity and other robustness checks. Mechanism analysis reveals that appropriate environmental regulation and market competition can strengthen this positive effect of NIC on the SDP of enterprises, while media attention weakens it. Heterogeneity analysis shows that integration infrastructure in NIC most significantly promotes the SDP of enterprises at the infrastructure level. At the regional level, NIC significantly promotes the SDP of enterprises in eastern and central areas. At the enterprise level, NIC more effectively promotes SDP in state-owned enterprises and in growth periods of enterprises. This study provides a theoretical reference and empirical evidence for enhancing global micro-level sustainable development.