Does Green Investment Improve the Comprehensive Performance of Enterprises? A Study on Large and Medium-Sized Steel Enterprises in China

In recent years, enterprise green investment is becoming more and more important for improving enterprise environment and promoting enterprise development. Combined with the measurement of slack (SBM) model and the “super efficiency” model, based on the panel data of China’s large and medium-sized steel enterprises from 2009 to 2020, this paper uses the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to construct a corresponding model to evaluate the comprehensive performance of enterprises, and further studies the impact of enterprise green investment on the comprehensive performance. The results show that: (1) Enterprise green investment has a significant positive effect on enterprise comprehensive performance; (2) Government supervision has a significant positive effect on enterprise comprehensive performance, and the influence of enterprise green investment on comprehensive performance is negatively regulated by government supervision; (3) Enterprise green investment has a heterogeneous effect in promoting comprehensive performance. In terms of scale, the promotion effect is more significant on large enterprises than medium-sized enterprises. In terms of ownership, the green investment of state-owned enterprises has no significant effect on comprehensive performance, while the green investment of private enterprises has a significant effect on the comprehensive performance. In terms of region, green investment has no significant effect on the comprehensive performance in eastern China while the green investment in the center of China and western China has a significant role in promoting comprehensive performance. The most important implication of this study is that enterprise green investment is an effective way to achieve comprehensive green transformation of enterprises.