Kurumsal sürdürülebilirlik performansı ile firma özellikleri arasındaki ilişki: Borsa İstanbul Sürdürülebilirlik Endeksi firmalarından kanıtlar

Research on sustainability issues has gained importance in recent years. Consequently, investigating the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and firm characteristics deserves more attention. The main aim of this study is to examine the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and firm characteristics, as well as examining the relationship between environmental corporate sustainability performance and social corporate sustainability performance and firm characteristics by providingempirical evidence from Borsa Istanbul Sustainability Index firms. The sample consists of 27 corporations and 119 firm-year observations for the period from 2016 to 2020. The models of this study utilize corporate sustainability performance, environmental corporate sustainability performance, and social corporate sustainability performance as independent variables, and firm characteristics as leverage measured by debt to total assets ratio, financial performance measured by return on assets, return on equity, or Tobin's q, growth opportunities measured by market-to-book ratio, and firm size indicators as independent variables. In this sense, this study examines the relationship between corporate sustainability performance, environmental corporate sustainability performance, social corporate sustainability performance, and firm characteristics using panel regression analysis. Empirical results of this study exhibit that financial performance has a negative relationship with corporate sustainability performance and environmental corporate sustainability performance. However, the empirical results on the relationship between financial performance and social corporate sustainability performance provide inconclusive evidence. Further, debt to total assets ratio and environmental corporate sustainability performance have a positive relationship, debt to total assets ratio and social corporate sustainability performance have a statistically significant negative relationship, and empirical results provide inconclusive evidence for the relationship between debt to total assets ratio and corporate sustainability performance. Empirical results demonstrate that the market-to-book ratio and corporate sustainability performance, environmental corporate sustainability performance, and social corporate sustainability performance has a positive relationship. Moreover, firm size with corporate sustainability performance and social corporate sustainability performance has a statistically significant positive relationship. However, the evidence on the environmental corporate sustainability performance and firm size relationship was inconclusive. Keywords: Corporate Sustainability Performance, Firm Characteristics, Corporate Sustainability Performance in Borsa Istanbul Index Firms, Panel Data Analysis