94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1509167
This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable and Mission-oriented Innovation in Economic Systems and Governance for Equitable Global Health and WellbeingView all 26 articles
Does Environmental, Social, and Governance News Coverage affect the Cost of Equity? A textual analysis of media coverage
Provisionally accepted- 1Shenzhen Polytechnic, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
- 2Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
- 3Tsinghua University, Beijing, Beijing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This paper investigates the relationship between ESG news coverage and the cost of equity. We use a machine learning approach to analyze news texts to construct an ESG media performance index. The results show a significant negative correlation between the cost of equity and corporate ESG media coverage, where a lower cost corresponds to approximately positive coverage. The mechanism test confirms that better ESG performance can decrease equity costs by improving the transparency of corporate information. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that the negative relationship is more significant in state-owned firms and large firms. Overall, this study provides new evidence for the value creation of ESG information for firms and enriches the literature on the cost of equity capital.
Keywords: ESG performance1, Cost of equity2, News coverage3, Information asymmetry4, Media attention5
Received: 10 Oct 2024; Accepted: 25 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Liang, Wang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chuanyu Liang, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.