Evaluating the Role of ESG Pillars in Sustainable Growth and Firm Performance: Panel Evidence from GCC Countries

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🔬研究者:ESG要素の個別効果とコンテクスト依存性を検証した実証研究として、新興市場におけるESG研究に貢献。

🏢実務担当者:GCC企業のサステナビリティ担当者は、環境施策を優先しつつ社会・ガバナンス施策の費用対効果を慎重に評価する必要性を認識すべき。

🏛政策担当者:GCC諸国の規制当局は、ESG開示枠組みの設計にあたり、社会・ガバナンス要素の負の効果が生じる可能性を考慮する必要がある。

Corporate governance serves as the institutional foundation that aligns managerial decisions with stakeholder interests and sustainable growth. It provides the accountability mechanisms necessary for translating environmental and social initiatives into measurable firm value. This paper examines how Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) pillars individually influence firm performance in Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCCs). The paper analyses a balance panel dataset comprising 84 listed firms observed over a five-year period from 2019 to 2023 with 392 observations. The paper employs two-way fixed effects with Driscoll–Kraay robust standard errors to ensure consistent inference by correcting for heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, and cross-sectional dependence. Firm performance is assessed by Tobin’s Q, return on assets (ROAs), and sustainable growth rate (SGR), reflecting market valuation, accounting profitability, and long-term sustainable growth, respectively. Tobin’s Q results show that GCC firms’ performance is enhanced by higher environmental pillar scores, whereas it responds negatively to increases in social and governance scores. Findings remain qualitatively similar for ROA but of a smaller magnitude. These findings challenge the conventional assumption that ESG dimensions uniformly enhance firm value, revealing instead that governance and social investments may impose agency costs or compliance burdens in emerging markets where institutional frameworks and stakeholder expectations differ fundamentally from developed economies. The environmental pillar exhibits a positive and significant association with firms’ long-term sustainable growth, whereas the social pillar exerts an adverse effect. Conversely, assessing firm performance with SGR reveals that the influence of the governance pillar is statistically insignificant. Theoretically, this paper contributes by demonstrating that ESG pillars operate through differentiated value-creation mechanisms in institutional contexts characterised by weak stakeholder activism and nascent ESG disclosure norms. Findings suggest GCC firms should prioritise environmental initiatives while carefully evaluating costs and benefits of governance and social programmes.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.3390/su18052475first seen 2026-05-15 18:30:09 · last seen 2026-06-15 05:27:22