Media and Institutional Investors Focus on the Impact on Corporate Sustainability Performance

This paper takes China’s A—share listed companies from 2010 to 2020 as a sample to study the impact of media attention, institutional investor attention, and their interaction on the sustainable development performance of enterprises as well as the regulatory role of internal control levels. The research shows that the attention of the media and institutional investors has a significant improvement effect on the sustainable development performance of enterprises; there is a significant substitution when they play a role at the same time. This substitution effect is significantly affected by the level of the internal control of enterprises, that is, with the improvement in the level of the internal control of enterprises, the substitution effect between the two will be weakened, and ultimately positively affect the level of the sustainable development of enterprises, which provides an effective policy basis for the sustainable development of listed enterprises and the use of external supervision by the government to supervise listed enterprises.