Graduation Year
2024
Date of Submission
12-2023
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP)
Reader 1
Nishant Dass
Rights Information
© 2023 Alexa S de Vegvar
Abstract
The demand for Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting has increased in recent years. As the concern for climate change has moved to the forefront of the investment process, companies have needed to prioritize ESG in their operations. Previous literature addresses how ESG has benefited companies’ financial performance and increased shareholder value. The pandemic has proven to have positively impacted ESG reporting as social priorities shifted. However, studies have also shown that ESG reporting is too ambiguous to concretely display any relationship with financial performance. This thesis will analyze the impact of ESG and environmental data reporting on the Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) for the energy and mining industries over the past 4 years (2018-2023). The regressions were split into pre- and post-COVID in hopes of seeing a shift in ESG reporting impacts on ROA and ROE. The results reinforced the unclear relationship between the variables with most regressions being statistically insignificant. Potential limitations could be due to the paucity of ESG research.
Recommended Citation
de Vegvar, Alexa, "Is Green the new Gold? ESG’s Influence on the Financial Performance of the Energy and Mining Industries" (2024). CMC Senior Theses. 3450.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/3450
