Prediction of the Sustainability Index in Family Firms Using Explainable Artificial Intelligence

Marcin Nowak (), Robert Zajkowski and Marta Pawłowska-Nowak
Additional contact information
Marcin Nowak: Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan University of Technology, 60-965 Poznan, Poland
Robert Zajkowski: Department of Banking and Financial Markets, Faculty of Economics, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, 20-031 Lublin, Poland
Marta Pawłowska-Nowak: Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan University of Technology, 60-965 Poznan, Poland

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 16, 1-30

Abstract: The first objective of the article is to develop a method for predicting the level of sustainability in family firms based on the dimensions of socioemotional wealth. To achieve this goal, the following machine learning algorithms were employed: Support Vector Regression (Linear Kernel), Support Vector Regression (Radial Basis Function Kernel), Decision Tree Regressor (DTR), K-Neighbours Regressor (KNR), Random Forest Regressor (RF), and Linear Regression (LR). The second objective was to determine the impact of individual socioemotional wealth dimensions on the sustainability index of family businesses. To this end, the Permutation Feature Importance (PFI) method, classified under Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), was used. The study’s results on Polish family firms revealed that the SEW dimension most strongly influencing the sustainability index is the active promotion of initiatives for the local community.

Keywords: sustainable development; socioemotional wealth; family firms; machine learning applications; XAI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/16/7226/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/16/7226/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:16:p:7226-:d:1721408

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().