Sustainability and financial performance among SDG-reporting fishing and farming firms: Evidence from quantile and Bayesian analysis

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:This paper provides evidence that the ESG-financial performance relationship is conditional on firm profitability levels, suggesting future research should account for heterogeneity.

🏢実務担当者:Fishing and farming firms can use these insights to understand that ESG investments may have different short-term and long-term financial impacts depending on their current performance.

🏛政策担当者:Policymakers should consider that ESG mandates may affect firms differently based on their financial standing, warranting differentiated policy approaches.

Research background: Within the agri-food sector, listed companies classified in the Fishing and Farming category face increasing pressure to integrate sustainability practices into business operations, yet the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors and financial performance remains insufficiently explored. The growing relevance of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in corporate strategy has intensified the need to understand how ESG commitments translate into measurable financial outcomes, especially in resource-intensive industries. Purpose of the article: This research examines how sustainability relates to the financial performance of listed fishing and farming companies that report SDG information, by analysing ESG practices alongside SDGs. Methods: Data were drawn from the London Stock Exchange Group database for listed companies classified under the Thomson Reuters Business Classification. Only firms disclosing SDG-related information were retained in the final sample. Financial performance is measured by means of return on common equity, return on assets, and income after tax margin. The methodology combines quantile regression, capturing differences across low, median, and high financial performance levels, with Bayesian network analysis to explore overall interlinkages, direct and indirect, between variables. Findings & value added: Results show that the relationship between sustainability and financial performance is strongly influenced by the firms’ performance position. While ESG practices can support financial performance, some may also generate short-term cost pressures. The study's novelty lies in its focused analysis of Fishing and Farming, its integration of ESG sub-scores with SDG contributions, and its examination of firms across the conditional distribution of financial performance, revealing important differences across quantiles. In the long term, this study contributes to sustainability theory by establishing that the relationship between financial performance and sustainability, whether measured through ESG factors or SDG contributions, is performance-conditional, urging future frameworks to incorporate firm-level heterogeneity when modelling sustainability outcomes in agricultural sectors.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.24136/oc.4258first seen 2026-07-18 06:25:39