This study employs a dataset comprising Chinese A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2021, with the objective of empirically examining the relationship between corporate ESG ratings, external media sentiment, and corporate innovation performance. The findings indicate that a favourable ESG rating can significantly enhance a company’s innovation performance, with external media sentiment exerting a supportive influence. Further analysis indicates that the optimistic media sentiment generated by a favourable ESG rating serves to reduce the financing threshold for companies, alleviate external financing constraints, and ultimately promote innovation performance. Heterogeneity analysis shows that in companies with higher financing constraints and lower levels of marketization in their location, the improvement of ESG ratings has a better effect on enhancing innovation performance. By examining the influence of external media sentiment on the relationship between ESG ratings and a company’s innovation performance, this study contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms through which media affects a company’s quality development. These findings have implications for the stimulation of a company’s innovation vitality and the guidance of their accelerated transformation.

This paper establishes a quasi-natural experiment grounded in the exogenous shock occasioned by the implementation of a compulsory corporate social responsibility (CSR) information disclosure policy. It investigates the ramifications of this mandated CSR information disclosure policy on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) through the integration of the difference-in-differences (DID) methodology. The investigation reveals that obligatory disclosure of CSR information significantly augments firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) by mitigating agency conflicts and financial constraints. Further analysis elucidates investment efficiency and innovation enhancement as pivotal conduits through which the mandatory CSR information disclosure policy fosters firms’ TFP. The study explores the impact of mandatory CSR information disclosure on firms’ TFP mechanism, which has significant policy value and can provide useful reference for the high-standard development of China’s corporate economic transformation.