ESG performance in the time of COVID-19 pandemic: cross-country evidence

The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) in developing and developed countries prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic; the study also seeks to reveal the impact of the COVID-19 on the performance of ESG during the pandemic period. Based on a large international panel dataset of 12,325 company-year observations covering 2016–2021, panel regression analysis examined the study hypotheses and achieved the study objectives. The findings indicate that companies have taken precautions against the threats of the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring compliance with ESG performance to prove their ethical behavior during a crisis. Our findings call into question the notion that companies in developed countries outperform companies in developing countries in terms of ESG performance. As a result, companies in emerging markets outperform companies in developed markets regarding environmental performance, while developed markets focus on social performance. Besides, the ESG performance is positively and significantly affected by the COVID-19, which indicates that during crises, it is important for companies to comply with ethical behavior and the most acceptable in societies. Also, the pandemic has a positive impact on both environmental and social performance, while it has a negative impact on governance performance alone. A considerable body of the literature has addressed the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on various aspects of a company’s financial and non-financial practices. However, limited effort was given to ESG performance. The current study fills this gap by evaluating the direct effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the ESG performance in developing and developed countries. It also provides insight into the ESG performance and corporate behavior and obligations.