IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/agribz/v42y2026i2p516-533.html

Does ESG Matter for Unlisted Companies in the Agri‐Food Industry? Evidence From Japan's Unlisted Agri‐Food Companies

Author

Listed:
  • Ying Wang
  • Satoru Shimokawa

Abstract

While ESG (environmental, social, and governance) is emphasized among listed companies for their stakeholders and ESG disclosures, ESG engagement among unlisted companies has been rarely examined due to data limitations. This is particularly problematic for the agri‐food industry that has significant impacts on the environment and consists mostly of unlisted companies. Thus, by constructing a unique data set of 514 unlisted agri‐food companies in Japan from 2018 to 2024, we investigate the patterns of ESG engagement and its association with economic performance across food supply‐chain sectors and companies' ownership types in the agri‐food industry. We find that ESG practices are more prevalent in the agricultural, food manufacturing, and wholesale sectors than in the retail sector, particularly among independent companies. However, these ESG practices have no influence on total sales in all cases and are negatively associated with net profits in the wholesale sector and among independent companies. These results suggest that ESG implementation may impose economic burdens on unlisted companies, underscoring the need for more effective public support and cross‐sector collaboration.

Suggested Citation

  • Ying Wang & Satoru Shimokawa, 2026. "Does ESG Matter for Unlisted Companies in the Agri‐Food Industry? Evidence From Japan's Unlisted Agri‐Food Companies," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(2), pages 516-533, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:42:y:2026:i:2:p:516-533
    DOI: 10.1002/agr.22067
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.22067
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/agr.22067?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:42:y:2026:i:2:p:516-533. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6297 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.