Does the EU Directive on non‐financial information influence the value relevance of ESG disclosure? Italian evidence

Abstract The implementation of the EU Directive on non‐financial information determines the transition from a voluntary to a mandatory disclosure setting. This paper is a first attempt to investigate if this transition influences the value relevance of non‐financial information, which relates to the environmental, social and governance disclosure (ESG) requirements of the Directive. Italy provides an interesting setting as non‐financial information was generally voluntary before the Directive, which was implemented with the Italian Legislative Decree 254/2016. To this extent, we examine the non‐financial, environmental and social disclosure practices of 231 Italian listed firms in the pre‐ (2016) and post‐ (2017) Legislative Decree application. Our results do not show any relevant increase of such disclosures after the Legislative Decree application, as Italian listed firms limit such disclosure to a minimum requirement. Further, this finding is confirmed also for those firms voluntarily providing a non‐financial report (sustainability or integrated report) before the Legislative Decree application. Our regression analysis shows that accounting numbers are associated with share prices, while non‐financial, environmental and social information are not value‐relevant with reference to the pre‐ and post‐Legislative Decree application. This means that the non‐financial, environmental and social information beyond the financial accounting information do not explain any incremental value‐relevant information to investors in the non‐financial mandatory disclosure setting required by the new regulation. Our results enrich previous evidence concerning the value relevance of non‐financial and ESG disclosure mainly focused on Anglo‐Saxon contexts.