CORPORATE SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY DISCLOSURE AND EARNINGS QUALITY OF LISTED NON-FINANCIAL FIRMS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study was prompted by increasing concern of stakeholders regarding the issues of sustainability reporting and to ascertain if social disclosure has any impact on the quality of reported earnings. The study design was longitudinal research, used secondary data from the annual reports of 38 listed non-financial firms in Nigeria between 2015 and 2024. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and system GMM estimation technique were used in data analysis. The system GMM result indicates that social sustainability disclosure of the firms have a positive and significant impact on the earnings quality with coefficients of 0.0664, t-statistics of 2.4875 and p-value of 0.0134. Post-estimation results did confirm the validity of the model with a probability of J-statistic of 0.2856 and AR(2) probability of 0.8782. The findings revealed that there is an improvement in earnings quality of listed non-financial firms as a result of social sustainability disclosure. The study suggests that there is need for firms to be extensive, consistent, and credible in their social sustainability reporting.