ESG performance and company financial performance, moderated by board gender diversity and sensitive industries

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to measure the relation between firm’s ESG performance and financial performance moderated by board gender diversity and sensitive industries. The sample contains 85 stock listed companies of three west-European stock indexes (AEX, BEL20 and DAX) from 2013 to 2020 (524 firm-year observations). The data is collected via the Revinitiv eikon database. The regression model does not find an effect of ESG performance on financial performance due to missing explanatory variables. The direct effect of ESG performance is found in the model with moderating variables. The results indicates that board gender diversity does not moderate the effect of ESG performance on financial performance. The results indicate that there is a moderating effect of sensitive industries to the effect of ESG performance. The effect is weaker for sensitive industries. Firms which operate in a sensitive industry are less stimulated to increase ESG performance because their ESG performance has less effect on their financial performance. This adds to the existing knowledge about ESG performance. It can contribute to policy makers that they have to stimulate firms in sensitive industries more to increase ESG performance.