Abstract: ESG performance serves as a crucial lever for corporations to practise sustainable development and is essential for high-quality corporate growth. While executives’ environmental experience may steer corporate attention towards environmental issues, can this experience be internalized into strategic decision-making, further influencing corporate social responsibility and governance, thereby enhancing ESG performance? This study empirically analyzes the impact of executives’ environmental experience on firms’ ESG performance using a sample of China’s A-share listed enterprises from 2009 to 2023. The findings reveal that executives’ environmental experience significantly promotes firms’ ESG performance. Mechanism analysis further indicates that this experience boosts ESG performance by building the firm’s cognitive understanding and development capacity in ESG. Moderation effect tests show that both the participation of the Party organization in corporate governance and media attention positively moderate the impact of executives’ environmental experience on ESG performance. Further analysis reveals heterogeneity in this impact. The effect is more pronounced in smaller firms, firms where executives do not hold vertical concurrent positions, non-heavy polluters and firms located in cities with higher levels of digital economy development and stronger environmental regulation intensity. Economic consequence analysis demonstrates that executives’ environmental experience drives improvements in operational returns and reductions in operational risk by enhancing corporate ESG performance. This study enriches the upper echelons theory and imprinting theory and contributes to improving corporate ESG performance, thereby continuously advancing the synergistic development of society, economy, and environmental protection in China.

Key words: executives’ environmental experience, ESG performance, corporate ESG cognitive capacity, corporate ESG development capacity