Effect of Corporate Sustainability Disclosure on Financial Performance of Oil and Gas Firms in Nigeria

The paper examined the effect of sustainability disclosure on financial performance of selected listed oil and gas firms in Nigeria. The population of the study comprises all the 12 listed oil and gas firms in Nigeria. The study used secondary data obtained from annual report of only ten (10) oil and gas publicly traded firms on the Nigerian stock Exchange covering a period of 5 years ranging from 2016 -2020. The research design that was adopted in this study was ex-post research design. The panel regression estimation technique was employed to investigate to what extent financial performance is affected by sustainability disclosure of the selected firms. Findings of this study revealed that environmental sustainability disclosure has statistically significant positive effect (P-value of 0.0227) on financial performance at 5% level of significant). Furthermore, economic sustainability disclosure and social sustainability disclosure has statistically insignificant effect on financial performance of selected listed firms in Nigeria. The study concluded that environmental sustainability disclosure has impacted positively on financial performance of companies investigated. However, economic social sustainability disclosure has no significant effect financial performance of selected listed oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Similarly, economic sustainability disclosure has statistically insignificant effect on financial performance of selected listed firms in Nigeria. Hence, the study recommends that, the management of oil and gas companies should improve on the environmental sustainability disclosure practices as it significantly affects their financial performance positively. Furthermore, the oil and gas firms in Nigeria should disclosure only material information regarding economic and social sustainability performance.