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To achieve the goal of sustainable development, China has implemented the energy conservation and emission-reduction policy. So far, there is still little evidence of the impact of the policiy on corporate behaviour. Therefore, this study collects data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2017 and applies the staggered difference-in-differences method to analyse the impact of the energy conservation and emission-reduction policy on the environmental, social and governance performance of companies in China. The result shows that the energy conservation and emission-reduction policy reduces environmental, social and governance performance, and this negative effect increases over time. Meanwhile, a further mechanism analysis confirms that the negative impact on environmental, social and governance performance operates through the incentive effect on environmental performance, the crowding-out effect on social performance and the spillover effect on governance performance. Furthermore, the negative effect is heterogeneous across companies and cities. Overall, our results provide empirical evidence for optimising energy conservation and emission-reduction policies in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental pollution damages public health and affects economic development. Environmental regulation is the main way for the government to solve environmental pollution. So what type of environmental regulation works better for public health and economic development? Can environmental regulation have an influence on economic development through public health? To solve these problems, this research uses China's provincial panel data from 2013 to 2017 to divide environmental regulation into command-control policy tools and economic incentive policy tools and uses the mediating effect model to examine the relationship among environmental regulation, public health and economic development. The results show that: (1) There is a positive correlation between economic incentive policy tools and economic development; while no significant relationship between command-control policy tools and economic development is founded; (2) The relationship between command-control policy tools and public health is not significant, while the relationship between economic incentive policy tools and public health is positive; (3) Public health does not play a mediating role between command-control policy tools and economic development but plays a partial mediating role between economic incentive policy tools and economic development. Therefore, the government should strengthen the use of economic incentive policy tools to promote public health and sustainable economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]