Search Results (104)

This study explores the relationship between corporate financial performance and ESG, reporting performance across all three ESG pillars: Environmental, Social, and Governance. We used a robust panel dataset of over 28,274 firm-year observations from listed companies worldwide (covering 2019–2023), combining financial metrics and ESG performance scores from the Refinitiv database. Panel regression results indicate that more profitable firms (measured by Net Income and Return on Assets (ROA)) exhibit statistically significant higher ESG performance across all three pillars, reinforcing the view that financial strength supports more comprehensive sustainability efforts. By contrast, firms with more ESG controversies attain significantly lower ESG scores, suggesting that incidents of misconduct or governance failures undermine sustainability reporting credibility. These findings contribute to the literature by empirically validating the dual role of financial success and reputational risk in shaping ESG performance. This study also offers practical insights for regulators, investors, and corporate managers. Strong profitability can facilitate improved ESG transparency, whereas proactive measures and stricter oversight are needed to address controversies, enhance accountability, and mitigate greenwashing. Full article

This study presents a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of the relationship between sustainability practices—commonly framed within the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework—and both corporate value creation and financial risk mitigation. Our primary objective is to assess how ESG initiatives affect firm outcomes, with particular emphasis on risk reduction, a dimension less explored in the economic and financial literature. The search was conducted in the Web of Science database on 15 June 2024, using the keywords “ESG and Financial Risk” and “ESG and Valuation,” yielding 1074 initial records. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, we analyzed the final sample through descriptive and frequency-based methods. Findings reveal no clear consensus on the connection between ESG and value creation, with results varying across sectors, firm sizes, regions, and specific ESG components. In contrast, the evidence supporting the link between ESG practices and financial risk mitigation is stronger: 68% of the reviewed studies reported a positive relationship, while only 5% found negative effects. This review underscores the potential of sustainability as a risk-management mechanism and highlights research gaps that warrant deeper exploration. Limitations include heterogeneity of methodologies, metrics, and contexts among the studies reviewed. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance is increasingly recognized as a pivotal metric for assessing corporate sustainability. Hence, this study investigates the effect of the Cultural and Tourism Consumption Promotion (CTCP) policy on corporate ESG performance. By treating the designation of demonstration cities as a quasi-exogenous policy event, a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology is adopted for a sample of Chinese A-share-listed culture and tourism companies from 2011 to 2024. The results indicate that the CTCP policy substantially improves culture and tourism firms’ ESG outcomes. Analysis of the underlying mechanisms identified three primary transmission channels: contributing to corporate revenue growth, encouraging green innovation, and alleviating financing constraints. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that the improvement effect of the policy on ESG performance is more significant in state-owned firms, those with sound governance structures, and labor-intensive culture and tourism firms. In addition, the policy may trigger strategic ESG disclosures, particularly among small-scale firms, leading to a greater divergence between their ESG reporting and their actual performance. Our findings illuminate the micro-level governance impacts of special policies for cultural and tourism consumption, providing a theoretical basis and empirical reference for improving culture and tourism industry policies and guiding firms’ sustainable development. Full article

Despite growing global concern, the gender pay gap (GPG) within China’s financial sector remains underexplored through systematic, data-driven approaches. This study presents one of the few, if not the only, systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analyses focused on the GPG in this context, aiming to map the intellectual landscape, thematic evolution, and policy relevance of the field. Peer-reviewed English-language articles published between 1975 and 2025 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection, enabling international benchmarking and citation mapping. A three-tiered screening protocol narrowed 209 initial records to 64 eligible studies. Bibliometric tools, including VOSviewer and R Bibliometrix, were applied to visualize co-authorship and co-citation networks. The analysis revealed three dominant research clusters—salary transparency, organizational barriers, and leadership gaps—while identifying emerging intersections with FinTech, ESG, and intersectionality frameworks. Despite these trends, the findings indicate limited citation influence, thematic fragmentation, and weak scholarly integration. While the exclusion of Chinese-language literature is a limitation, it is justified for comparative consistency. Overall, this study demonstrates how combining bibliometrics with policy analysis uncovers underexplored “invisible metrics” that sustain gender disparities. It provides a foundational evidence base for future academic inquiry and actionable reforms aligned with SDG 5 and ESG mandates. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues have gained increasing prominence in corporate agendas and the academic literature. However, significant hurdles remain regarding its effectiveness, standardization, and authenticity. This work aims to develop a framework containing recommendations to overcome these hurdles and enable more effective ESG practices. To this end, a systematic literature review (SLR) was adopted as the research method to provide an organized and in-depth overview of the current state of the art in the ESG literature and its main gaps. Through the SLR, 35 hurdles were identified, organized into five axes: integration, assessment, stakeholders, territoriality, and sectorization. Building on these hurdles, a framework comprising 39 recommendations was proposed, targeting the ESG key players: companies, rating agencies, guideline developers, academia, and other stakeholders. As a theoretical contribution, this work articulates previously fragmented knowledge on ESG, helping to bridge the identified research gap, outlining pathways for further and deeper reflections, especially in relation to the persistent decoupling between expected and achieved results in sustainability. As practical contributions, it helps avoid negative impacts for ESG key players, leading them to achieve more realistic assessments, adopt better practices, and increase comparability across initiatives, supporting ESG to reach greater effectiveness, enhance assessment metrics, increase the consistency of reporting, broaden stakeholder engagement, and strengthen institutional mechanisms. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings are widely used for investment and regulatory decision-making, yet they often suffer from symbolic compliance and information asymmetry. To address these limitations, this study introduces a hybrid ESG risk assessment model that integrates court ruling data with traditional ESG ratings to detect latent sustainability risks. Using a dataset of 213 ESG-related U.S. court rulings from January 2023 to May 2025, we apply natural language processing (TF-IDF, Legal-BERT) and explainable AI (SHAP) techniques to extract structured features from legal texts. We construct and compare classification models—including Random Forest, XGBoost, and a Legal-BERT-based hybrid model—to predict firms’ litigation risk. The hybrid model significantly outperforms the baseline ESG-only model in all key metrics: F1-score (0.81), precision (0.79), recall (0.84), and AUC-ROC (0.87). SHAP analysis reveals that legal features such as regulatory sanctions and governance violations are the most influential predictors. This study demonstrates the empirical value of integrating adjudicated legal evidence into ESG modeling and offers a transparent, verifiable framework to enhance ESG risk evaluation and reduce information asymmetry in sustainability assessments. Full article

As investors increasingly use Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria, a key challenge remains: ESG data is typically reported annually, while financial markets move much faster. This study investigates whether incorporating annual ESG scores can improve monthly stock return forecasts for German DAX-listed firms. We employ a multivariate long short-term memory (LSTM) network, a machine learning model ideal for time series data, to test this hypothesis over two periods: an 8-year analysis with a full set of ESG scores and a 16-year analysis with a single disclosure score. The evaluation of model performance utilizes standard error metrics and directional accuracy, while statistical significance is assessed through paired statistical tests and the Diebold–Mariano test. Furthermore, we employ SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) to ensure model explainability. We observe no statistically significant indication that incorporating annual ESG data enhances forecast accuracy. The 8-year study indicates that using a comprehensive ESG feature set results in a statistically significant increase in forecast error (RMSE and MAE) compared to a baseline model that utilizes solely historical returns. The ESG-enhanced model demonstrates no significant performance disparity compared to the baseline across the 16-year investigation. Our findings indicate that within the one-month-ahead projection horizon, the informative value of low-frequency ESG data is either fully incorporated into the market or is concealed by the significant forecasting capability of the historical return series. This study’s primary contribution is to demonstrate, through out-of-sample testing, that standard annual ESG information holds little practical value for generating predictive alpha, urging investors to seek more timely, alternative data sources. Full article

This study examines whether the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors enhances the accuracy of financial forecasts. Using a dataset of 2548 publicly listed companies from 98 countries, we evaluate a range of machine learning models—from ARIMA to XGBoost—by comparing the forecast performance of firms with high and low ESG scores (based on the sample median). Model accuracy is assessed through MAE, RMSE, MSE, MAPE, and R², complemented by statistical significance tests. Results show no consistent improvement in predictive performance for high-ESG firms, with only the Business Services sector displaying a marginal effect. These findings challenge the assumption that ESG integration inherently reduces forecast uncertainty, suggesting instead that ESG scores contribute little to predictive accuracy under long-term investment conditions. The study highlights the importance of model choice, careful control of exogenous variables, and rigorous testing, while underscoring the broader need for standardized ESG metrics in financial research. Full article

As sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility gained increasing importance in agriculture, several impact assessment methodologies have been proposed. Social Return on Investment (SROI), a methodology used for understanding, measuring, and reporting the social, economic, and environmental value created by an organization, emerged as a promising approach to quantify and monetize social and environmental impacts. However, research on SROI application within the wine industry remains limited, despite the sector’s global relevance and unique economic, social, and cultural dimensions. This study addresses this gap by evaluating the potential and limitations of SROI in assessing the social impact of a wine cellar’s products, services, and activities on its stakeholders. Indeed, we find confirmation that, as in other sectors, this methodology can support sustainability reporting and strategic decision-making. Applying the SROI methodology, stakeholder outcomes were analyzed, and the results indicate that for every EUR 1 invested, approximately EUR 1.44 of social value is generated, demonstrating SROI’s effectiveness in capturing social contributions beyond financial metrics. This study highlights SROI’s advantages, while also acknowledging challenges. Findings suggest that, despite some limitations, SROI can enhance wineries’ sustainability strategies and offers a robust framework to guide wineries—and potentially other agricultural sectors—toward socially responsible and sustainable practices. Future research should focus on developing industry-specific proxies and integrating SROI with other sustainability assessment tools, particularly in support of ESG reporting. This study contributes to academic discourse on impact evaluation methodologies and provides practical implications that aim to balance economic performance with social responsibility. Full article

Urban livability and sustainability are increasingly studied at the neighborhood scale, where built, social, and governance conditions shape residents’ everyday experiences. Yet existing assessment frameworks often fail to integrate subjective perceptions with multi-dimensional environmental indicators in replicable and scalable ways. To address this gap, this study develops an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-informed framework for evaluating perceived environmental quality in urban communities. Using Baidu Street View imagery—selected due to its comprehensive coverage of Chinese urban areas—and Point of Interest (POI) data, we analyze seven communities in Shenyang, China, selected for their diversity in built form and demographic context. Kernel Density Analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) are applied to derive latent ESG-related spatial dimensions. These are then correlated with Place Pulse 2.0 perception scores using Spearman analysis to assess subjective livability. Results show that environmental and social factors—particularly greenery visibility—are strongly associated with favorable perceptions, while governance-related indicators display weaker or context-specific relationships. The findings highlight the differentiated influence of ESG components, with environmental openness and walkability emerging as key predictors of perceived livability. By integrating pixel-level spatial features with perception metrics, the proposed framework offers a scalable and transferable tool for human-centered neighborhood evaluation, with implications for planning strategies that align with how residents experience urban environments. Full article

Climate change poses an existential threat, spurring businesses and financial markets to integrate environmental accounting and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) disclosures into decision-making. This study aims to examine how environmental accounting practices and ESG reporting contribute to climate change mitigation in organizations. It seeks to highlight the significance of these tools in enhancing transparency and accountability, thereby driving more sustainable corporate behavior. By synthesizing the recent literature, the study contributes a comprehensive overview of best practices and challenges at the intersection of accounting and climate action, addressing a noted gap in consolidated knowledge. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) following PRISMA guidelines. A broad search (2010–2024) across Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar identified 73 records, which were rigorously screened and distilled to 47 relevant peer-reviewed studies. These studies span global contexts and include both conceptual and empirical work, providing a robust dataset for analysis. Environmental accounting was found to play a pivotal role in measuring and managing corporate carbon footprints, effectively translating climate impacts into quantifiable metrics. Firms that implement rigorous carbon accounting and internalize environmental costs tend to set more precise emission reduction targets and justify mitigation investments through a cost–benefit analysis. ESG disclosure frameworks emerged as critical external tools: a high-quality climate disclosure is linked with greater stakeholder trust and even financial benefits such as lower capital costs. Leading companies aligning reports with standards like TCFD or GRI often enjoy enhanced credibility and investor confidence. However, the review also uncovered challenges, like the lack of standardized reporting, risks of greenwashing, and disparities in adoption across regions, that impede the full effectiveness of these practices. The findings underscore that while environmental accounting and ESG reporting are powerful means to drive corporate climate action, their impact depends on improving consistency, rigor, and integration. Harmonizing global reporting standards and mandating disclosures are identified as key steps to improve data comparability. Strengthening the credibility of ESG disclosures and embedding environmental metrics into core decision-making are essential to leverage accounting as a tool for climate change mitigation. The study recommends that policymakers accelerate moves toward mandatory, standardized ESG reporting and urges organizations to proactively enhance their environmental accounting systems that will support global climate objectives and further research on actual emission outcomes. Full article

This study examines the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles within Romania’s residential real estate sector, concentrating on Constanța, a rapidly evolving urban centre in a transitional economy. Drawing on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with local real estate professionals and secondary analysis of policy and market documents, the research uncovers inconsistencies in ESG implementation. Environmental compliance is advancing, largely driven by EU regulations such as the European Grean Deal, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Voluntary certification schemes like BREEAM and LEED are emerging as benchmarks for environmental performance; however, their uptake remains limited and insufficiently tailored to local conditions. Meanwhile, the social and governance dimensions lag behind, characterised by inconsistent application and weak institutional backing. Key barriers to effective ESG integration in Romania’s residential real estate sector include weak regulatory enforcement, fragmented policies, limited green finance, low awareness, and a lack of standardised social value metrics. The study concludes that without moving beyond mere regulatory compliance to a framework embedding social inclusivity and adaptive governance, ESG efforts risk perpetuating existing inequalities. It calls for a reconceptualisation of ESG frameworks, developed for mature markets, to better suit transitional urban contexts and support long-term resilience in residential real estate. Full article

International organizations have highlighted the importance of consistent and reliable environment, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and metrics to inform business strategy and investment decisions. Greater corporate disclosure is a positive signal to investors who prioritize sustainable investment. In this study, economic and climate sentiment are extracted from the integrated and sustainability reports of the top 40 corporates listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, employing domain-specific natural language processing. The intention is to clarify the complex interactions between climate risk, corporate disclosures, financial performance and investor sentiment. The study provides valuable insights to regulators, accounting professionals and investors on the current state of disclosures and future actions required in South Africa. A time series analysis of the sentiment scores indicates a noticeable change in the corporates’ disclosures from climate-related risks in the earlier years to climate-related opportunities in recent years, specifically in the banking and mining sectors. The trends are less pronounced in sectors with good ESG ratings. An exploratory regression study reveals that climate and economic sentiments contain information that explain stock price movements over the longer term. The results have important implications for asset allocation and offer an interesting direction for future research. Monitoring the sentiment may provide early-warning signals of systemic risk, which is important to regulators given the impact on financial stability. Full article

Despite numerous global initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the implementation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics aimed at mitigating climate change, promoting social welfare, and addressing a variety of other causes, progress has been significantly slower than expected, particularly in developing economies. Thus, we attempted to link corporate ESG to sustainable development. It was also investigated whether ESG contributes to a reduction in corporate risk. Using panel data and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) technique, we examine the relationship between ESG scores and important financial risk indicators such as systematic risk (beta), stock price volatility, unsystematic risk, and the cost of capital (WACC). The findings show that corporations place a disproportionate emphasis on governance (G) rather than environmental (E) and social (S) characteristics. ESG and G governance were also found to be statistically significant predictors of financial risk. This disparity shows that companies may be using high governance scores to conceal underperformance in environmental and social issues, raising worries about greenwashing and superficial compliance. As a result, their contributions to SDGs such as affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), climate action (SDG 13), and reduced inequalities (SDG 10) are minimal. The findings highlight the need for a more open, balanced, and integrated ESG approach, one that not only promotes sustainable development but also improves long-term financial resilience. Full article

The construction sector, facing a persistent productivity gap compared to other industries, is hindered by fragmented value streams, inconsistent performance metrics, and the limited scalability of process improvements. We introduce a pioneering, four-tiered hierarchical productivity framework to respond to these challenges. This innovative approach integrates operational, tactical, strategic, and normative layers. At its core, the framework applies standardised, repeatable process steps—mapped using Value Stream Mapping (VSM)—to capture key indicators such as input efficiency, output effectiveness, and First-Time Quality (FTQ). These are then aggregated through takt time compliance, schedule reliability, and workload balance to evaluate trade synchronisation and flow stability. Higher-level metrics—flow efficiency, multi-resource utilisation, and ESG-linked performance—are integrated into an Overall Productivity Index (OPI). Building on a modular production model, the proposed framework supports real-time sensing, AI-driven monitoring, and intelligent process control, as demonstrated through an empirical case study of continuous process monitoring for Kelly drilling operations. This validation illustrates how sensor-equipped machinery and machine learning algorithms can automate data capture, map observed activities to standardised process steps, and detect productivity deviations in situ. This paper contributes to a multi-scalar measurement architecture that links micro-level execution with macro-level decision-making. It provides a foundation for real-time monitoring, performance-based coordination, and data-driven innovation. The framework is applicable across modular construction, digital twins, and platform-based delivery models, offering benefits beyond specialised foundation work to all construction trades. Grounded in over a century of productivity research, the approach demonstrates how emerging technologies can deliver measurable and scalable improvements. Framing productivity as an integrative, actionable metric enables sector-wide performance gains. The framework supports construction firms, technology providers, and policymakers in advancing robust, outcome-oriented innovation strategies. Full article