The influence of ESG information on investment allocation decisions

Abstract

Purpose In addition to financial reporting, more and more companies report environmental, social and governance (ESG) information in emerging countries. This practice is intended to fulfill the information needs of all the company’s stakeholders, and more specifically the investors. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze whether investors include ESG information into their investment allocation decisions in Tunisian capital market. Second, to identify the information dimension having the more effect on their investment allocation decisions. Design/methodology/approach A field experiment was conducted in an emerging country (Tunisia) among 245 novices and experienced financial stakeholders to analyze how ESG information is taken into account in their investment allocation decisions. Findings The results of the factorial mixed analysis of variance show that ESG information influenced the investment allocation decisions in Tunisia. In addition, the results of the post-hoc test indicate that governance and social information had more influence than environmental information. Research limitations/implications This paper is limited to the analysis of the influence of ESG information only on the decisions of financial stakeholders in Tunisia. In future research works, it will be relevant to study the decisions of other stakeholders and to carry out comparative studies between several countries. Practical implications The results can only strengthen and motivate companies to pay more attention to their ESG information disclosure practices. They are also likely to attract the attention of the accounting standard setters on the need to standardize these practices. Originality/value The original contribution of this paper lies not only in the analysis of three dimensions of extra-financial information: E, S and G through an experiment carried out in an emerging country, but also especially in the comparison of the influence of each dimension on investment allocation decisions.