The Role of Sustainability Disclosures for the Capital Market Participants: Evidence from Turkey

The business world weighs mostly the financial data and reports but sustainability disclosures and reports are increasingly on the agenda of investors, analysts and market specialists. The non-financial information such as the quality of risk management, corporate governance, strategic direction, and social performance included in the annual reports and especially the sustainability reports show the market participants a course of action by better understanding the company’s business strategy, and growth perspective. Accordingly, the sustainability reports should have more places in the investor relations communication in order to explain clearly their commitment and future projects to the capital market participants. This paper investigates how the capital market participants value the sustainability reports, how they embed them in their analysis and which practices they prize. In order to investigate these points, semi-structured interviews are realized with professionals from the sector and the interviews showed the importance of the safety, innovation, environment protection and communication with stakeholders. The paper portrays the potential issues in the sustainability disclosures that can make them as important as financial reports and attract the capital market participants who generally have a long term perspective.