|
" The Effect of Environmental Transparency on the Financial Performance of Publicly Traded Companies in Turkey "
Sahin, Elif Gokce
| Document Type
|
:
|
Latin Dissertation
|
| Language of Document
|
:
|
English
|
| Record Number
|
:
|
1058589
|
| Doc. No
|
:
|
TL57706
|
| Main Entry
|
:
|
Sahin, Elif Gokce
|
| Title & Author
|
:
|
The Effect of Environmental Transparency on the Financial Performance of Publicly Traded Companies in Turkey\ Sahin, Elif Gokce
|
| College
|
:
|
Harvard University
|
| Date
|
:
|
2019
|
| Degree
|
:
|
ALM
|
| student score
|
:
|
2019
|
| Note
|
:
|
57 p.
|
| Abstract
|
:
|
In the developed world, the importance of sustainability for the competitiveness of companies is unquestionable. However, one of the components of sustainability, environmental transparency, is relatively hard to be prioritized, especially in a developing country like Turkey. Among a total of 509 publicly traded companies in Turkey, only around 10% have ever published a sustainability report and disclosed their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as of 2016. Recent data show a total of only 197 published sustainability reports encompassing 72 organizations, compared to 3.5 million companies in Turkey, of which 1.5 million are big corporations (TOBB, 2017; GRI, 2017). These facts indicate that most Turkish companies do not value environmental transparency. There is certainly a need for showing these companies the effect of environmental disclosure on their financial performance. The main research question of this paper is: What is the relationship between financial performance and environmental transparency for publicly traded companies in Turkey? Environmental performance criteria used in this research were from published sustainability reports and disclosed GHG data through the CDP (formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project; a global platform where companies voluntarily report their GHG emissions). Financial performance criteria used in this research were Tobin’s Q ratio, market value to book value ratio (MV/BV), return on equity (RoE) and return on assets (RoA). I hypothesized that financial performance is predicted by environmental transparency performance. To test this hypothesis, regression analysis was used with panel data of 60 publicly traded companies that were uninterruptedly listed in the BIST100 index for six years between 2012 and 2017. The analyses were run to determine effects in the same year and also two years later. Because the financial structures are very different, manufacturing and financial sector companies were analyzed separately. The results of the research analyses showed only a limited effect of environmental transparency on financial performance; in some cases, transparency was negatively correlated with performance. In all the analyses of two major and two subsectors, the effect of sustainability reporting (SR) on the financial performance of BIST100 companies was found to be not significant both for the current year of reporting and after two years of reporting. CDP score was found to significantly and positively affect only the consumer discretionary subsector for the same year. On the other hand, CDP score was negatively correlated with MV/BV in the financial sector with 10% significance and Tobin’s Q ratios in the manufacturing sector and banks subsector with 5% significance. Additionally, the RoE variable positively and significantly affected the CDP score in the manufacturing sector and accordingly in its subsector, consumer discretionary, in the two-year time lag analyses with 5% significance level. A positive significant effect of CDP score was also seen in the RoA variable in the banking sector in the two-year time lag analysis with 5% significance level. Interestingly, a negative significant effect on the CDP score was also shown by the MV/BV variable in the manufacturing sector over a two-year time lag analysis, at the 10% significance level.
|
| Descriptor
|
:
|
Environmental science
|
|
|
:
|
Finance
|
| Added Entry
|
:
|
Harvard University
|
| |