 Financial materiality in the informativeness of sustainability reportingEduardo Schiehll and Sam Kolahgar Business Strategy and the Environment, 2021, vol. 30, issue 2, 840-855 Abstract: This study examines whether financial materiality in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure benefits the stock market by increasing the amount of accessible and relevant firm‐specific information. Based on the value relevance of information and the principle of financial materiality, we demonstrate that disclosing material ESG information increases stock price informativeness. We conduct an automated content analysis of 150,000 electronic documents filed by firms listed on the S&P/TSX Composite Index from 1999 to the end of 2014. Our findings show that ESG disclosure is indeed value relevant for investors and that financial materiality in ESG disclosure leads to more informative stock prices. In addition, the effect of ESG disclosure on stock price informativeness differs across the ESG components, being more sensitive to the social component. This study contributes to the literature on sustainability reporting, and in particular to the ongoing discussion about whether the financial materiality of ESG issues matters. This study also deepens the understanding of agency theory predictions about the economic effects of ESG disclosure. Date: 2021 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:30:y:2021:i:2:p:840-855 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Business Strategy and the Environment is currently edited by Richard Welford More articles in Business Strategy and the Environment from Wiley Blackwell |
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