Recently, Professor Wang Bin from the School of Economics at Wuhan Textile University and his team published a high-level paper titled "The Impact of Green Public Procurement on Corporate ESG Performance" in the international journal Journal of Environmental Management. Professor Wang Bin is the first author of the paper, with Wuhan Textile University as the first author's affiliation, and Shen Ziyi, a 2023-level postgraduate student, serving as the corresponding author of the paper.

As an internationally accepted macro-control tool and a key component of the fiscal governance system, government green procurement combines the advantages of command-and-control and market-based regulation. Based on government green procurement orders identified from procurement contracts published on China's Government Procurement Network, this study uses data from Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2023 as samples. It examines the impact and mechanism of government green procurement on corporate ESG performance through theoretical analysis and empirical testing.

The study finds that government green procurement affects corporate ESG performance through two pathways: direct effect and indirect effect. The direct effect refers to government green procurement exerting incentive and supervisory roles, prompting enterprises to proactively invest in green initiatives, thereby improving their ESG performance. The indirect effect lies in government green procurement playing a signaling role, attracting co-institutional investors and green investors. These specific investors then participate in corporate governance, indirectly enhancing corporate ESG performance.

The heterogeneity analysis is conducted from the dimensions of government green procurement types and corporate characteristics. In terms of procurement types, the positive role of government green procurement is more evident in local government green procurement and products under mandatory green procurement. In terms of corporate characteristics, the promoting effect of government green procurement on corporate ESG performance is more significant in enterprises with strong resource acquisition capabilities, low information transparency, and large scales.

In the further analysis, the paper explores the green spillover effect of government green procurement from the supply chain perspective. It finds that increasing green procurement from downstream enterprises has a significant spillover effect on the ESG performance of upstream supplier enterprises. The results of this study provide certain implications for the formulation of current government green procurement policies and enterprises' implementation of ESG activities.

Journal of Environmental Management is an international authoritative academic journal focusing on the fields of environmental science and ecology. It has a five-year impact factor of 8.6, and is an ABS 3-star journal, a SCIE Q1 journal in the JCR category of Environmental Sciences, and a Top Q2 journal in the Chinese Academy of Sciences' category of Environmental Science and Ecology. The paper was indexed in July 2025.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.126394