Table 3.

Trading Volume of CSI300 Stocks Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic Period: This table reports averages of the trading volume of Mainland CSI300 firms traded on Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The ‘Normal period’ is from Feb 11, 2019 to Mar 31, 2019, and the ‘Pandemic period’ is from Feb 3, 2020 to Mar 31, 2020. High-ESG firms are portfolios above $ESG\_total$ sample median, low-ESG firms otherwise. These two periods cover 2 months after the Chinese New Year holidays. Trading volume data are from the Wind database. The symbols *, **, and *** indicate significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively.

		All CSI300 firms
	Average daily trading volume	Average daily number of trades	Average trade size
	(RMB Yuan, in million)		(RMB Yuan)
Normal period	792	32550.9	24.28
Pandemic period	878	36698.4	30.72
Difference	-85.8	-4147.5	-6.44
T-statistics	-6.26***	-8.44***	-7.17***
		High ESG firms
	Average daily trading volume	Average daily number of trades	Average trade size
	(RMB Yuan, in million)		(RMB Yuan)
Normal period	775	33114.2	24.64
Pandemic period	856	35658.5	33.36
Difference	-80.8	-2544.3	-8.72
T-statistics	-3.92***	-3.17***	-8.29***
		Low ESG firms
	Average daily trading volume	Average daily number of trades	Average trade size
	(RMB Yuan, in million)		(RMB Yuan)
Normal period	805	32125.6	24.01
Pandemic period	896	37517.5	28.64
Difference	-90.3	-5391.9	-4.63
T-statistics	-4.92***	-8.82***	-3.39***
	High ESG firms minus Low ESG firms
	Average daily trading volume	Average daily number of trades	Average trade size
	(RMB Yuan, in million)		(RMB Yuan)
Normal period	-30.2	988.5	0.63
T-statistics	-1.61	1.39*	0.63
Pandemic period	-39.7	-1859	4.72
T-statistics	-1.97**	-2.70***	3.26***