Implications of Material Sustainability Reporting on Profitability: A Textual Analysis of Material Sustainability Reporting in Annual Reports, and Implications on Profitability
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HansenAlvsaker_14441901_2021.pdf
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HansenAlvsaker_14441901_2021_Appendix1.pdf
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HansenAlvsaker_14441901_2021_Appendix2.pdf
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HansenAlvsaker_14441901_2021_Appendix3.pdf
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- I research whether material sustainability reporting has a positive impact on profitability. Although I find a significant relation between material sustainability reporting efforts and profitability within several sectors, the explanatory power is close to zero in all cases. This indicates that material sustainability reporting is not correlated to profitability. To perform my analysis, I develop a textual analysis tool that is applied on a sample of 38,530 Form 10- K reports. The textual analysis tool calculates a material sustainability reporting score for each Form 10-K, which is used as the independent variable in a linear regression model. My research on material sustainability reporting and its impact on profitability fills a gap in the literature, and my findings may be of help to those looking to evaluate firms’ material sustainability efforts.