Speed up for sustainable development: High-speed rail and corporate ESG performance

With sustainability becoming a fundamental concept in development, there has been a growing emphasis on corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. This paper examines how the high-speed railway (HSR) network would affect enterprises' ESG performance by constructing an indicator of HSR network advantages based on social network analysis (SNA). We found that the HSR network advantages can enhance corporate ESG performance, and this effect is achieved by alleviating financing constraints and promoting corporate technological innovation. Meanwhile, the effect of HSR network advantages on corporate ESG performance is more pronounced in private firms, low-polluting industries, and cities with high initial transportation resource endowments. Furthermore, we further examine the impact of the sub-dimensional characteristics of the HSR network on corporate ESG performance. We found that degree centrality (DC), betweenness centrality (BC), and closeness centrality (CC) all have a positive effect on enhancing firms' ESG performance, but closeness centrality (CC) produced the largest impact.