Environmental Responsiveness and Firm Value: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of environmental responsiveness on firm value in Nigeria and provides an insight into the feasibility of corporate entities engaging with the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, without compromising their wealth creation agenda. Secondary data were gathered from annual reports and audited accounts of 83 quoted non-financial firms for three years covering the period of 2016–2018. Thereafter, a regression analysis using the Ohlson value relevant model for price valuation was done. Results of the empirical analysis confirm the positive influence of value relevance of book values, earnings per share, alongside environmental responsiveness and firm size on the firm value of Nigerian firms, while leverage is inversely related. Remarkably too, firms with higher values tend towards being environmentally responsive. Impliedly, there is an empirical evidence of reverse causality between firm value and environmental responsiveness.

Keywords

• book value
• eco-efficiency
• equity
• firm value
• iso14001
• sustainable development
• m14
• g19