Sustainable development goals and corporate reporting: An empirical investigation of the oil and gas industry

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, many companies have started to include references to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in their corporate reporting as a means for demonstrating their contribution to sustainable development. However, connecting company results to the SDGs is not straightforward, since this framework has not been originally designed for corporate reporting, resulting in high heterogeneity among companies and industries. Moving from this consideration, this paper focuses on a sector that is highly sensitive in relation to the SDGs – the oil and gas (O&G) industry – and aims to analyse whether O&G companies mention the SDGs in their corporate reporting and examine what are the characteristics of companies engaging more with such reporting. By conducting an empirical analysis of corporate reporting practices on a sample of 75 companies, the study confirms the relevance of SDG reporting in the O&G industry and shows the influence of company size, geographical area, the level of internationalisation and the economic performance of firms on the usage of the SDG reporting.