Is banks’ ESG disclosure associated with financial depth and economic growth? Evidence from the Visegrad Four countries

IF 4.7 2区环境科学与生态学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Environmental Development Pub Date : 2025-05-08 DOI:10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101233

Gabriella Lamanda , Zsuzsanna Vőneki Tamásné

{"title":"Is banks’ ESG disclosure associated with financial depth and economic growth? Evidence from the Visegrad Four countries","authors":"Gabriella Lamanda , Zsuzsanna Vőneki Tamásné","doi":"10.1016/j.envdev.2025.101233","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The paper explores the relationship between financial depth, economic growth and banks’ ESG performance, examining the evolution of sustainability disclosures. While sustainability considerations are becoming more widespread in the financial sector, the connection between ESG performance and financial depth remains inadequately explored. This highlights the importance of investigating and understanding the interaction between these factors, as such an analysis would provide significant value to market participants. The study analyses sustainability-related reports disclosed by 26 banks operating in the Central European region (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) covering the 2017–2023 period, in response to increasing regulatory expectations. The research uses content analysis methodology to create a specific ESG Disclosure index and panel regression to enhance the robustness of our findings.</div><div>The results show that banks have significantly improved their sustainability disclosures, although the establishment of ESG risk management framework has not progressed sufficiently. The findings reveal a significant negative relationship between ESG performance and financial depth, underscoring the potential trade-off between sustainability efforts and financial system expansion. This suggests that achieving net-zero economy by 2050 may require more robust regulatory interventions to reconcile these dynamics. Furthermore, the positive relationship between economic growth and ESG performance highlights the pivotal role of financial institutions not only in driving growth but also in supporting sustainability initiatives. These results highlight the need for a more integrated approach that aligns financial stability with long-term environmental and social goals<strong>.</strong> The findings urge regulators to improve sustainability disclosures and develop more comprehensive regulations for a sustainable future.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54269,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Development","volume":"55 ","pages":"Article 101233"},"PeriodicalIF":4.7000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environmental Development","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211464525000995","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between financial depth, economic growth and banks’ ESG performance, examining the evolution of sustainability disclosures. While sustainability considerations are becoming more widespread in the financial sector, the connection between ESG performance and financial depth remains inadequately explored. This highlights the importance of investigating and understanding the interaction between these factors, as such an analysis would provide significant value to market participants. The study analyses sustainability-related reports disclosed by 26 banks operating in the Central European region (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) covering the 2017–2023 period, in response to increasing regulatory expectations. The research uses content analysis methodology to create a specific ESG Disclosure index and panel regression to enhance the robustness of our findings.

The results show that banks have significantly improved their sustainability disclosures, although the establishment of ESG risk management framework has not progressed sufficiently. The findings reveal a significant negative relationship between ESG performance and financial depth, underscoring the potential trade-off between sustainability efforts and financial system expansion. This suggests that achieving net-zero economy by 2050 may require more robust regulatory interventions to reconcile these dynamics. Furthermore, the positive relationship between economic growth and ESG performance highlights the pivotal role of financial institutions not only in driving growth but also in supporting sustainability initiatives. These results highlight the need for a more integrated approach that aligns financial stability with long-term environmental and social goals. The findings urge regulators to improve sustainability disclosures and develop more comprehensive regulations for a sustainable future.

查看原文本刊更多论文

银行的ESG信息披露是否与金融深度和经济增长有关？来自维谢格拉德四国的证据

本文探讨了金融深度、经济增长和银行ESG绩效之间的关系，考察了可持续性披露的演变。虽然可持续性考虑在金融部门变得越来越普遍，但ESG绩效与金融深度之间的联系仍未得到充分探讨。这突出了调查和理解这些因素之间相互作用的重要性，因为这样的分析将为市场参与者提供重要的价值。该研究分析了中欧地区（捷克共和国、匈牙利、波兰和斯洛伐克）26家银行在2017-2023年期间披露的与可持续发展相关的报告，以应对日益增长的监管期望。本研究采用内容分析方法建立特定的ESG披露指数，并采用面板回归来增强研究结果的稳健性。结果表明，尽管ESG风险管理框架的建立进展不够充分，但银行的可持续性信息披露已显著改善。研究结果显示，ESG绩效与金融深度之间存在显著的负相关关系，强调了可持续性努力与金融体系扩张之间潜在的权衡关系。这表明，到2050年实现净零经济可能需要更强有力的监管干预来调和这些动态。此外，经济增长与ESG绩效之间的正相关关系凸显了金融机构不仅在推动增长方面，而且在支持可持续发展举措方面的关键作用。这些结果突出表明，需要采取更加综合的方法，使金融稳定与长期环境和社会目标保持一致。研究结果敦促监管机构改善可持续性信息披露，并为可持续发展的未来制定更全面的法规。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Environmental Development Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

8.40

自引率

1.90%

发文量

审稿时长

74 days

期刊介绍： Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action. Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers. All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.