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This is an acceptable fact that firms put efforts to maximize shareholders wealth but there is growing demand that firms are also accountable to various stakeholders associated directly or indirectly with the firms' business activities. Investors now evaluate firm's performance not only from financial perspective but also consider environment, social, and governance (ESG) factors when taking investment decision. ESG is not visible in firm's annual financial reports but investors do not deny its significance when valuing firms. There are increasing interests in ESG by communities, professionals, and government bodies, and all are interested to keep it as part of firms' regular activity and have to relate it with firm performance and efficiency that affects firm value. Still, there are difficulties in integration of ESG factors into investment decision-making, but efforts are being put to overcome all the issues. Firms which consider ESG are in a good position to achieve their long-term financial goals as they are likely to attract capital, lower borrowing costs, mitigate risks, and maximize shareholders value.

The aim of this research paper is to analyze the connection between ESG performance and financial performance within the real estate sector. By focusing on ESG ratings and pillar scores as proxies for ESG performance, the study investigates how these factors impact both profitability and market indicators.

With data sourced from over 680 publicly listed real estate companies, the research employs a fixed effects regression model to analyze the findings. By utilizing this method, the study can assess the impact of governance, environmental and social factors on both the accounting and market performance of real estate companies.

The outcomes of this study underscore a link between sustainability, particularly environmental aspects and financial performance. However, the study also reveals a contrasting result: governance factors are associated with adverse financial outcomes. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight the limitations as the results present a mixed picture with limited significant findings.

Companies should prioritize improvements in environment to boost profitability, while they should carefully consider the costs and benefits associated with enhancing their governance structure.

By focusing on this industry and adopting a global perspective, the study addresses a gap in the literature. The research’s innovative approach to utilizing ESG ratings and pillar scores as proxies for ESG performance enhances its originality. Furthermore, the research’s identification of the differing impacts of environmental and governance factors on financial outcomes add novel perspectives to the discourse.

The primary objective of the study is to discover the most prominent criteria and sub-criteria among environmental issues, social dimensions and corporate governance factors that may impact individual equity investors' investment decisions.

The present study collected data from 438 individual equity investors from the North Indian region. To achieve the objectives of the study, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP) was applied. The key considerations of the study were environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.

The governance criterion was discovered to be the most significant factor influencing individual equity investors' investment decisions among the three ESG factors, followed by environmental criteria, while social criteria were shown to be the least influential.

The present study solely looked at ESG issues as drivers of stock investors' investment decisions. In the current world, however, many other factors, including behavioral biases, accounting information, ownership structure and fundamental analysis, can have a substantial influence on investors' investment decisions.

The study's findings widen the theoretical contribution in the field of responsible investment by asserting how ESG factors influence investors' investment decisions in the equity market. From a practical standpoint, this study applies to retail and institutional investors, portfolio managers, financial advisors, market regulators, corporations and society at large.

To the best of authors knowledge, no attempt has been made to prioritize the ESG issues that impact the investment decisions of individual equity investors. Ergo, this study contributes to the existing literature on socially responsible investment.

The banking industry faces increasing scrutiny from stakeholders regarding its environmental and social impacts, given its crucial role in fostering economic growth. Banks have been encouraged to adopt environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices to mitigate risks and safeguard their reputation. However, the effectiveness of ESG sensitivity within the banking industry is contingent upon ownership and structural factors. The extent to which banks can integrate ESG considerations into their operations and decision-making processes may vary based on their ownership structures. Therefore, this study aims to examine if the impact of ESG on the performance of Indian banks varies between private and public sector banks.

The study employs six years of panel data from two separate samples of 12 private sector banks and 10 public sector banks in India. It utilises fixed and random effect estimation techniques with robust standard errors to derive accurate and reliable econometric results.

The main findings of this study reveal intriguing insights into the relationship between ESG factors and bank performance, considering the influence of ownership structure. For private sector banks, the ESG composite score, particularly the social dimension, negatively impacts financial performance. However, there is a contrasting positive effect on efficiency. In contrast, public sector banks demonstrate a positive and significant association between the environmental score and return on equity and non-performing assets.

The findings highlight the need for tailored strategies that align with ownership structure to achieve sustainable financial and societal outcomes in the banking industry. Furthermore, it emphasises the need for private-sector banks to streamline their ESG initiatives, especially in the social dimension, to mitigate negative impacts on their financial performance.

This study introduces a novel dimension by addressing the “one size fits all” bias in prior research that overlooked bank ownership differences when examining the impact of ESG factors on bank performance.

The ESG factor, which consists of environmental, social, and governance factors, represents the non-financial performance of a company. United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment invites investors to consider ESG issues when evaluating the performance of any company. Moreover, nowadays, the contribution of corporations towards sustainable development is a major concern of investors, creditors, government, and other environmental agencies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of ESG factors on the performance of Malaysian public-limited companies (PLC) in terms of profitability, firm value, and cost of capital.

A total of 54 companies are selected from Bloomberg’s ESG database that has complete ESG and financial data from 2010 to 2013. This study conducted panel data regressions such as the pooled OLS, fixed effect, and random effect.

Based on the regression results, there is no significant relationship between individual and combined factors of ESG and firm profitability (i.e. ROE) as well as firm value (i.e. Tobin’s Q). Moreover, individually, none of the factors of ESG is significant with the cost of capital (weighted average cost of capital, WACC), but the combined score of ESG positively and significantly influences the cost of capital (WACC) of a company.

As this is a new study on Malaysia, the findings of this study will be useful to investors, SRI analysts, policy makers, and other related agencies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first empirical study to examine the impact of ESG factors on the performance of Malaysian PLC in terms of profitability, firm value, and cost of capital.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework that jointly considers Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors and organisational resilience (OR) components to ameliorate organisations' understanding of sustainability’s overall requirements and related decision-making processes.

This paper combines ESG and OR through a 3x3 conceptual matrix, where ESG factors are listed along the vertical axis and OR components along the horizontal axis. This results in nine quadrants, which have been read according to two arrangements: (1) static, looking at the specific characteristics of each single quadrant, and (2) dynamic, investigating the relationships between the different quadrants according to the system theory (ST) lens.

The integration between ESG and OR results in nine organisational typologies, each characterised by a specific focus: (1) green visioning, (2) eco ethos, (3) climate guard, (4) inclusive strategy, (5) empathy ethos, (6) community shield, (7) ethical blueprint, (8) integrity ethos and (9) compliance guard. These typologies and related focuses determine the different strategic options of organisations, the decision-making emphasis concerning ESG factors and OR components and the organisation’s behaviour concerning its internal and external environment. According to ST, the nine typologies interact with each other, emphasising the existence of interconnectedness, interdependence and cascading effects between ESG and OR.

The paper represents a unique attempt to interrelate ESG factors and OR components according to a ST lens, emphasising the dynamic nature of their interactions and organisations’ need for continuous adaptation and learning to make decisions that create sustainable long-term value.

This study examines whether international tourism demand in the Visegrád countries is influenced by countries' risk rating on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, as non-economic factors relating to ESG risks have been ignored by previous researches on determinants of international tourism demand.

The study investigates panel data for the Visegrád countries comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia over the period 1995–2019. Recently developed techniques of augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) estimators are employed so as to take care of cross-sectional dependence, nonstationary residuals and possible heterogeneous slope coefficients.

The regression estimates suggest that besides economic factors, the perception of international tourists regarding ESG risk is another important determinant of international tourism demand in the Visegrád countries. The study also established that income levels in the tourists' originating countries are the most critical determinant of international tourism demand to the Visegrád countries.

The research outcomes of the study include the need for the Visegrád countries to direct policies towards further mitigating their ESG risks in order to improve future international tourism demand in the area. They also need to ensure exchange rate stability to prevent volatility and sudden spikes in the relative price of tourism in their countries.

Considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors is vital in climate change mitigation. Energy companies must incorporate ESG into their business plans, although it unquestionably affects their corporate financial performance (CFP). This paper aims to investigate the effect of ESG on energy companies’ profitability through return on assets by analysing the combined score and individual dimensions of ESG.

The study examined a panel data sample of 911 firm-year observations for 85 European energy-sector companies during 1995–2020. Two distinct modelling specifications were applied to explore the impact of ESG components on the CFP of EU energy companies. The financial data and ESG scores were obtained from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database in July 2021.

The empirical findings revealed that energy companies’ profitability is marginally and negatively affected by their ESG performance. Whereas independent evaluation of the ESG subcomponents indicated that environmental responsibility has a significant negative effect. In contrast, corporate social and governance responsibilities are positively but not significantly associated with the company’s CFP.

This study fills a research gap in the ESG–CFP literature in the European energy sector, a pioneer in sustainable development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study’s originality lies in its analysis of ESG factors’ role in profitability by considering different EU countries and energy sectors.

This research aims to determine the influence of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors on market performance. The study shows the perspective of ESG on market performance. The study attempted to test the relationship between ESG and Tobin’s Q and the effect of control variables.

The study used panel data from a sample covering 720 firms and ran a fixed-effects model regression during the 2007–2019 period for eight European countries’ listed companies.

The findings reveal that ESG positively impacts Tobin’s Q. According to the findings, high company ESG performance boosts market performance via the moderator effect of competitive advantage. The results indicate that all control variables are significant. The firm’s leverage has a negative relationship with ESG. The size of the firm impacts ESG positively. Also, the results prove that the firm’s size and industry positively affect Tobin’s Q.

The findings of this study suggest that managers, practitioners and authorities interested in learning about ESG scores (ESGSs), market performance and competitive advantage might draw intriguing conclusions from the data. Managers can identify the appropriate levels of competitive advantage that improve market performance. Practitioners must determine whether fit, size, growth, leverage and industry could enhance market performance. The findings also give authorities and the board of directors information on future growth opportunities for the company and the country.

The research presents a vision of how ESG factors affect market performance. This study aims to identify the positive link between ESGSs and European market performance.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between stock markets, environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and Shariah-compliant in an integrated framework.

The authors employ the multivariate factor stochastic volatility (mvFSV) framework to extract the volatility of the different sectoral indices. Based on this evidence, the authors employ the quantile vector autoregressive (QVAR) approach to examine the dynamic spillover connectedness among the aforementioned indices.

The study emphasizes the following major findings: (1) significant time-varying spillover connectedness across quantiles, (2) bidirectional and asymmetric spillover effect among the ESG index and the other sectoral indices, (3) the strength of spillover connectedness is time-varying across quantiles, (4) based on the perspective of portfolio optimization, ESG market is a significant strong forecasting contributor to conventional and Shariah-compliant markets, (5) overall, the findings point out serious quantile pass-through effect among ESG index and the other sectoral indices during the COVID-19 health crisis.

This study extends the previous literature in the following ways. First, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, none of the existing studies have investigated the relationship between stock markets, ESG factors and Shariah-compliant in an integrated framework. Second, this study extends the previous scholarships by applying the mvFSV. Third, the authors propose a new rolling version to estimate dynamic spillovers, namely the rolling-window quantile VAR method. This approach provides a great advantage in computing the dynamics of return and variance spillover between variables in terms not only of the overall factor but also of the net (pairwise) aspect.