Comparative Analysis of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Implementations across Asia

Purpose: The main objective of this study is to compare the ESG implementations from an Asian capital market perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The current study spanned seven years from 2014 until 2020 across six Asian countries, namely Japan (197), Hong Kong (20), Singapore (27), Philippines (22), Taiwan (105) and Malaysia (56). The ESG implementations were represented by the ESG scores obtained based on the readily calculated ESG Disclosure Score from Bloomberg's database. The current study employed a rank-based nonparametric test of Kruskal-Wallis H in determining the possibility of significant differences that all the ESG scores indicators may vary in six countries Findings: The results indicate a significant difference exists for ENV_S, SOC_S, GOV_S and ESG_S and support all the postulated hypotheses. In terms of the highest commitment in implementing the ESG across Asian countries, Taiwan was denominated with the highest mean value of total ESG score and reporting the highest maximum score value by 80.99 compared to the others. Research limitations/implications: Due to data availability, analysis was done based on comparisons of only six Asian countries. Thus, the results might not be inconclusive in explaining the overall performance of ESG investment across the Asian region. Practical implications: Integrating the ESG factors into investment decision making might be one of the important stimuli towards long-term value creation across Asian future investment prospects. Originality/value: Current study analyses the ESG implementations across Asian countries by analysing the possibility of statistically significant differences in all the ESG scores indicators using the rank-based nonparametric test. Paper type: Research paper Keywords: Environment score, Social score, Governance score
Introduction The issues related to the area of sustainability, including environmental, social, and governance (ESG), are progressively being incorporated into corporate investment decisions across Asia. The interest of Asia investors, [...]