The compliance of Turkish listed firms with the Sustainability Principles Compliance Framework

Voluntary sustainability disclosure specifically in developing countries exhibits a crucial area of research interest. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the voluntary sustainability compliance disclosures for Turkish firms and investigate the factors driving sustainability compliance by providing new insights into the determinants of sustainability principles compliance. This empirical chapter covers the years between 2015 and 2020 and is based on Borsa Istanbul (BIST) 100 indexed firms. This chapter uses two distinct methodological approaches: first, content analysis to identify the disclosure levels and second, the Spearman rank correlation coefficient for investigating the linkage between overall sustainability principles disclosure scores and financial indicators. This chapter reveals the disclosure pattern of corporate sustainability and investigates factors impacting the extent of disclosures by using content analysis and Spearman correlation analyses. The findings reveal that large-scale firms and firms with a higher share of institutional investors are more likely to disclose sustainability practices to the public to satisfy greater stakeholder scrutiny.