| dc.description.abstract | There is a branch of literature discussing the relationship between corporate financial performance and corporate ESG rating, but only a few hinge upon the reality of corporate ESG behavior and the current ESG rating system. This study takes firm size and the degree of corporate ESG information disclosure as main dependent variables, using total assets, revenue, number of employees, and market capitalization as controls for firm size and corporate GRI standard completion rate as proxy for corporate ESG information disclosure. Controlling for financial variables, namely return on assets (ROA), debt-to-equity ratio (D/E), leverage, and goodwill, this article utilizes corporate ESG score and carbon emission density to represent the symbolic and real actions of corporate sustainability, respectively. Corporate ESG scores are sourced from the ESG rating of Taiwan Stock Exchange, and carbon emission is universally perceived as an important index to measure sustainable actions. To further research on the differences across industries, this study analyzes and compares manufacturing to non-manufacturing industries (excluding the financial industry). This research finds different results in all industries, as well as between manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries. For all industries, firm size and the degree of environmental information disclosure have a positive effect on ESG ratings. In the manufacturing industry, specifically, only firm size has a positive effect on ESG ratings, while in the non-manufacturing industry, only environmental information disclosure bears a positive effect on ESG ratings. Regarding carbon emission concentration, the degree of environmental information disclosure has a positive and significant effect on carbon emission concentration whether all, manufacturing, or nonmanufacturing industries are considered. However, firm size does not have an unanimous effect on carbon emission concentration.Based on the results, this study makes several policy recommendations. This paper believes that Taiwan’s regulations can draw reference to the ESG regulations promulgated by the EU in recent years, such as Directive 2014/95/EU and SDFR, to further regulate corporate ESG information. As regards ESG evaluation, ESG performance of individual firms can be evaluated under the corporate scale of Excellence Corporate Social Responsibility. Through the concerted efforts of the government and private sectors, Taiwan will gradually reduce the possibility of greenwashing behaviors and promote substantive actions on carbon reduction for enterpris. | en_US |