Financial Factors, Corporate Governance and ESG during Covid-19 Pandemic: Malaysian Evidence

Abstract

This study investigated the factors influencing the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure of public listed companies in Malaysia, particularly before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using 62 Public Listed Companies in Malaysia and 248 firms’ years of observation from the year 2018 to the year 2021, it found that profitability, growth of the company, company’s size, board size, gender diversity, auditor tenure, and ESG disclosure highest during the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak period. It also discovered that profitability and independent board members had positively related to ESG disclosure before and during the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Keywords: ESG; Financial factors; Corporate Governance; Covid-19 eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2023. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v8i23.4493