THE EFFECT OF VOLUNTARY SUSTAINABILITY INSTRUMENTS ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

Resumo

The study aims at investigating the effect of voluntary sustainability instruments, more specifically, the presence of a sustainability committee and the adherence to a self- regulatory code, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), on ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and financial performance of Brazilian companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange (B3). The ESG data for the sample of Brazilian companies was collected from the Resultante database, presenting complete ESG data from 2017 to 2019. Financial data was collected from the Economatica database for the same period. Finally, information on the presence of the sustainability committee and the adherence to the UNGC was gathered through the Bloomberg database. For the analysis, panel data regression was the method applied in Stata. The results obtained show that the adoption of voluntary sustainability instruments has a significant impact on the ESG performance of Brazilian companies, but does not meet the same trend regarding financial returns.