Effects of ESG Management on Financial Performance and Firm Value of Food Companies

ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) activities of food manufacturing companies are likely to affect consumers’ consumption behaviors and companies’ management performance; however, research on the effects of ESG activities on management performance for food manufacturing industry is still in its early stage due to data access problems in Korea. In this study, we constructed panel data for the top 30 food manufacturing companies based on revenue over a period of seven years (2016∼2022) to examine the effects of ESG evaluation ratings on their management performance such as financial performance and corporate value. For the analysis, we employed fixed-effects specification, and used ESG rating data evaluated and released by the Korea Corporate Governance Service, as well as financial information and corporate valuation data published by the Financial Supervisory Service and the Korea Exchange. We find that the ESG rating of food manufacturing companies did not have a statistically significant effect on return on sales (ROS) and return on equity (ROE). However, results indicate that the rating had a statistically significant positive effect on price-to-book ratio (PBR) and Tobin’s Q. This suggests that the ESG activities of food manufacturing companies can potentially be an effective management strategy in enhancing the value of the companies in both the shrot and long-term dimensions.