Corporate social environmental reporting and stock prices: an analysis of listed firms in Nigeria

The study investigated Corporate Social Environmental Reporting and its association with stock prices (using market price per share as at the financial year end) among listed firms in Nigeria. The study used a cross-sectional research design comprising 50 publicly listed companies across various sectors for the period of five years (2011–2015). For the selected firms, the annual report was used to collect the data. This research utilizes the panel data regression in analyzing the influence of the independent variable (measured by corporate social and environmental expenditure) on the dependent variable measured using the market price per share) for the respective years. Also, in an attempt to examine the relatively market price per share across the sampled industries, the study made use of the one-way analysis of variance; while the Granger causality test was also conducted to ascertain whether bi-directional relationships exist between explanatory variable and the dependent variable (i.e. corporate social and environmental expenditure and market price per share). Findings from the study revealed that the association between corporate social and environmental expenditure and the market price of the firm (when considered in aggregate) is not significant. The result from the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed that the market price per share is significantly different across the industries.