SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING AND FIRM VALUE OF LISTED OIL AND GAS COMPANIES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Aside adequate financial capital, companies also require strong governance and workplace practice that recognizes environmental and social needs of current and future stakeholders for it to achieve long term sustainability. The work examined the effect of sustainability reporting practices of environmental, social and economic on the firm value proxied by Tobin’s Q of listed oil and gas firms in Nigeria. The work relied mainly on secondary source of data and comprised of published annual reports. The analytical tools consist of descriptive and correlation matrix. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regression. The research answered that; environmental sustainability reporting has a positive significant effect on the value of listed oil and gas firm in Nigeria. Also, economic sustainability reporting has a negative significant effect on the value of listed oil and gas firm in Nigeria. The result also showed that firm characteristics proxied by sales growth and leverage exerts a negative significant effect, whereas, firm size exerts a positive significant effect on sustainability reporting and firm value of oil and gas companies in Nigeria. The work concluded that adequate compliance with sustainability rules and regulation will go a long way to bring more investors to the company which will in turn ultimately increase the firm value. Based on the above findings, the work recommended that oil and gas firms should comply 100% with the rules and regulations of sustainability reporting to increase the value of their firm in the long run.