Following the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers and investors began paying attention to corporate social responsibility and value. With awareness of the climate crisis heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world are...
Following the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers and investors began paying attention to corporate social responsibility and value. With awareness of the climate crisis heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world are declaring “carbon neutrality” one after another, which reduces carbon emissions to zero (net-zero) by increasing absorption as much as carbon emissions.
Recently, ESG management at home and abroad is an essential element and is actively being promoted in corporate management activities including the government. Corporate investors have begun to form a consensus on sustainable investment that pursues social value, and as part of this movement, they began to investigate and quantify their corporate ESG activities and use them to make investment decisions. Interest in ESG management is exploding, but research in business administration remains as an investment-related financial evaluation index, and trend research that reflects various academic and practical perspectives is needed.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the ESG trend for 4 years from 2019 to 2022 according to the trend of increasing interest and need for ESG. ESG-related news articles and sustainability reports were analyzed through various machine learning algorithms such as frequency analysis, TF-IDF, Wordcloud, network analysis, LDA, and Doc2Vec.
As a result of frequency analysis and TF-IDF analysis, the top keywords from the perspective of ‘investment’ and ‘finance’ in 2019 are changing to keywords from the perspective of ‘management’ and ‘business’. After COVID-19, issues related to ‘ESG corporate activities’ and the ‘environment’ have been mentioned frequently.
As a result of the LDA analysis, it can be seen that the expansion of ESG investment has led to improved awareness and ultimately desirable changes in society. Furthermore based on the analysis, it can be seen that since 2019, the social role of pension funds with high publicity has been strengthened and the introduction of a higher level of responsible investment has been expanded. Since then, the pandemic has occurred, and ESG-related investments have further increased, especially in the public and general sectors, such as climate risks. After 2022, social campaigns through spread, and small and medium-sized businesses also carried out ESG-related strategies and ESG activities. As a result, it was confirmed that ESG-related investments provided the justification for improving public awareness and increasing long-term profits throughout society.
According to the Doc2Vec analysis results between sustainability reports, similarity results were derived with no difference by industry or company's business model. Although companies are increasingly measuring ESG performance and disclosing ESG information, it has been difficult to distinguish how it affects profitability and corporate value.
In general, corporate social responsibility activities are carried out with a focus on ‘maximization of social welfare’ as well as ‘maximization of shareholder wealth’, which is a narrow corporate goal. (Eunjung Yeo, 2020) It was confirmed that the method based on ESG investment like this eventually increases the utility value profit of society as a whole.
As a suggestion of this study, first, as social utility value has expanded due to ESG-related investments so far, investors such as pension funds should take the lead in implementing corporate value investing in the mid-to long-term. As can be seen in the results of this study, ESG The influence of investment has led to changes in society as a whole, and long-term investment is needed to achieve this goal. Second, it is necessary to establish ESG evaluation criteria from various perspectives. After 2021, the campaign activities of executives and employees were activated, and a pan-national ESG awareness sharing took place. By adding a variety of qualitative evaluation factors, such as ESG campaign activities, social investment, and raising ethical awareness among executives and employees, greater utility value will be achieved.
This study is significant in that it analyzes trends in ESG-related news through various machine learning models of text mining and derives insights. Through this study, companies in the future will be able to utilize keywords for internal qualitative evaluations such as 'sustainability reports' that reflect trends.