Sustainability reporting in metropolitan municipalities

The concept of sustainability, which covers many areas, also concerns metropolitan municipalities, which are one of the local government units. During the election period of the metropolitan municipalities that will provide services to the local community, people want to see the future situation of the metropolitan municipalities and to investigate the sustainability of the metropolitan municipalities. In this context, in order to observe the continuity of a metropolitan municipality or to report its sustainability, it may be necessary to examine the information on social, economic and environmental dimensions in its corporate reports. One of the best ways to access this information would be to examine the annual activity reports shared by metropolitan municipalities. Within the scope of the study, the annual activity reports and sustainability reports, if any, shared by 30 metropolitan municipalities serving in Turkey in 2020 were examined. The explanations in these reports published by metropolitan municipalities were evaluated with the content analysis method and the sustainability reporting scores were determined. Sustainability reporting scores are calculated according to these three dimensions: economic, social and environmental, both separately and by taking the sum of these scores. The data obtained as a result of the calculations were compared with each other by using statistical methods such as multiple linear regression, independent t-tests and anova, and it was analyzed whether there was a relationship between them and whether there was a significant difference between the determined groups. According to the result of the study, it was examined that the total sustainability score dependent variable had a moderate, positive and significant relationship with the size independent variable, and a strong positive and significant relationship with the political structure independent variable. No significant relationship was found with the variables of mission and vision, leverage ratio, liquidity and educational status.