Environmental Responsibility and Sustainable Growth of Listed Industrial Goods Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

This work empirically investigated the effect of environmental responsibility on sustainable growth of listed industrial goods firms in Nigeria. The study is vital as it portrays the extent to which corporate environmental responsibility influence firms’ sustainable growth in Nigeria. In order to determine the relationship between environmental responsibility and firms’ sustainable growth, some key proxy variables were used in the study, namely environmental research and development disclosure and waste management disclosure while firm sustainable growth on the hand was measured using sustainable growth rate. Two hypotheses were formulated to guide the investigation and the statistical test of parameter estimates was conducted using Panel least squares regression model. The research design used is Ex Post Facto design and data for the study were obtained from the published annual financial reports of industrial goods firms listed on the floors of the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) spanning from 2019-2023. The findings generally indicate that environmental research and development disclosure and waste management disclosure have positive and significant effect on firm sustainable growth in Nigeria at 1% level of significance. Based on this, the study concludes that corporate environmental responsibility ensures sustainable growth of listed industrial goods firms in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that firms in Nigeria should sustain and also increase the disclosure of their environmental activities in their published financial statements, as it has the potential to positively influence sustainable growth of firms even though it is not mandatory.