Material Sustainability and Investment Efficiency

This study aims to investigate the effect of material sustainability investment on investment efficiency and to analyze how material sustainability moderates the relationship between accounting conservatism and investment efficiency. We examine the behavior of 104 listed firms in the TSE in four industries under the Extractives and Minerals Processing sector over six years from 2016 to 2021. Material Sustainability activities have been specified according to SASB standards and firms are scored according to disclosure of investing in these activities. The conservatism level has been measured using the accrual-based measure and the Q-Tobin measure is employed as a proxy for investment efficiency. The research findings indicate that firms investing more in material sustainability issues have higher efficiency. Furthermore, while the moderating role of material sustainability performance on the relationship between accounting conservatism and investment efficiency was not confirmed for the entire period study, the material sustainability investment intensified the relationship between conservatism and investment efficiency before the outbreak of COVID-19 (2016-2019).