Environmental responsibility and financial performance nexus in South Africa: panel Granger causality analysis

The authors examined environmental responsibility and financial performance nexus of Johannesburg Stock Exchange's socially responsible investing manufacturing and mining firms during the period of 2008-2014. The study employs annual panel dataset of fourteen manufacturing and mining companies on the index, and Granger causality analysis using Gcause2 Baum's version. The paper found unidirectional causal relationship between environmental responsibility, measured by emissions intensity and equity returns, and bidirectional causal relationship between emissions intensity and market value of equity deflated by sales at 1% significant levels. Impliedly, improvements in ‘energy efficient technologies' to reduce fossil energy consumption (prevention activities) seem to exhibit value destroying tendencies, while improvements in ‘end-of-pipe' activities seem to estimate a drive market value of equity deflated by sales and equity returns. The Pesaran CD and Breusch-Pagan LM tests confirmed existence of cross-sectional dependence amongst panel members. The authors tend to support institutional and stakeholder theories.