FIRM-SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING PRACTICE OF LISTED MANUFACTURING FIRMS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Sustainability accounting is essential for corporate responsibility and transparency, but little is known and lack of institutional policy about how its mandatory and relates to business characteristics in Nigerian firms is poorly understood. Therefore, the study investigates firm-specific characteristics and sustainability reporting practice of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria Exchange Group. The research seeks to reveal how firm specific characteristics such as financial literacy, leverage, profitability Firm profitability, size and age influence sustainability reporting practice. Using a content analysis method based on indicators, we compute the sustainability reporting index, the study extracts data from the annual reports and sustainability reports. The study employs quantitative research design and utilizes a panel data from the annual reports of thirty-one (31) listed manufacturing firms on the floor of Nigerian Exchange Group for the years 2015 to 2024. The data analyses using Random-Effect regression model to analyse the firm specific characteristic and their variation. Findings shows that the two most important firm specific factor that significantly impact the disclosure of environmental sustainability are profitability and financial literacy. Nevertheless, there was no proof of a meaningful correlation between leverage and sustainability disclosure found in the current investigation. Therefore, this study concludes that financial literacy and profitability are significant to sustainability disclosure. This study contributes to the existing literature on corporate governance and environmental sustainability reporting and offered a valuable recommendation to companies’ management, stakeholder and policy makers aim to improve sustainability reporting.