Gender makes no difference to ESG reporting in Asian agri-food firms, survey finds

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting has become one of the defining corporate practices of the past decade, but its spread across the agri-food sector in emerging Asian economies has remained poorly documented. A new study published in Agricultural and Food Economics examines how motivations and obstacles shape ESG disclosure among agri-food companies in China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia, and asks whether the gender of respondents changes those relationships. The answer to the gender question, based on multi-group statistical analysis, is no.

The research team, led by Haonan Shi with colleagues including Zihe Zhou, Yi Zhou and Bhairab Talukdar, surveyed 400 professionals with direct knowledge of ESG reporting, drawing 100 respondents from each of the four countries. Participants came from twenty purposively selected agri-food companies per country, spanning dairy, grain processing, beverages, packaged retail goods, oilseeds, livestock, tea, rubber, palm oil and rice. Each company contributed five respondents, including employees with ESG knowledge, chartered accountants, chief executives and managing directors, consultants and specialists, and other managerial staff. The survey ran from December 2024 to May 2025, and respondents answered closed-ended questionnaires distributed by direct message or targeted email.

The composition of the sample reflects the study’s focus on people who actually shape or verify disclosure. Consultants and specialists made up the largest group at 31.25 percent, followed by employees with ESG knowledge at 26.50 percent, chartered accountants at 23.25 percent, chief executives and managing directors at 10.50 percent, and other management-involved staff at 8.50 percent. The authors justify this purposive approach by noting that ESG reporting expertise is rarely concentrated in designated ESG management roles, and that chartered accountants review corporate reports before publication, making them well placed to comment on the implementation of reporting standards.

Methodologically, the study used partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to estimate the effects of ESG motivations and ESG obstacles on ESG reporting practices, and PLS multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA) to test whether the paths differed between male and female respondents. The framework drew on agency theory, which treats disclosure as a tool for reducing information asymmetry between managers and shareholders; stakeholder theory, which frames reporting as a response to the expectations of investors, consumers, regulators and communities; and legitimacy theory, which views disclosure as a means of securing social acceptance. Bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples and bias-corrected confidence intervals was used for significance testing at the 5 percent level, and a G*Power analysis indicated a minimum required sample of 129, well below the 400 achieved.

The headline result is that both motivations and obstacles are positively and significantly associated with ESG reporting practices. The path coefficient from ESG motivations to reporting practices was 0.693, a strong positive effect, while the coefficient from ESG obstacles was 0.237, positive and statistically significant despite being much weaker. Together, the two constructs explained 69.84 percent of the variation in ESG reporting practices. Model fit indices were reported as CFI of 0.96, TLI of 0.94, RMSEA of 0.041 and SRMR of 0.049, all within conventional thresholds. Measurement quality was supported by composite reliability values above 0.7, average variance extracted above 0.5, and heterotrait-monotrait ratios below the critical value of 1.

The positive role of motivations aligns with theoretical expectations. Firms in the sector face intense scrutiny over climate impacts, food safety, labor practices and supply chain transparency, and the authors note that meat consumption alone is estimated to account for roughly 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, intensifying pressure on animal protein producers. Motivations measured in the study included reputation and image enhancement, legitimacy seeking, reduction of information asymmetry, response to public and regulatory pressure, and meeting the information rights of shareholders and investors. When the motivation construct was decomposed in robustness checks, external motivations such as regulatory pressure and investor expectations showed relatively stronger explanatory power than internal ones such as ethical orientation and managerial commitment.

The positive coefficient for obstacles was the study’s most counterintuitive finding. The hypothesis had predicted that barriers such as regulatory ambiguity, lack of expertise, high compliance costs, fragmented standards and greenwashing risk would suppress disclosure. Instead, firms reporting greater obstacles exhibited stronger reporting practices. The authors interpret this through a defensive legitimacy and risk-management lens: in a sector with high public visibility and reputational vulnerability, challenges may heighten managerial awareness of scrutiny and potential sanctions, prompting firms to formalize and intensify reporting as a protective response rather than retreat from it. They emphasize that this does not mean obstacles improve ESG performance itself, only that they appear to activate disclosure as a signaling and legitimacy-preserving tool in environments where regulation is uneven and enforcement is still evolving.

This interpretation was subjected to extensive robustness testing. The model was re-estimated with controls for firm size, listing status and country fixed effects, and the positive obstacle coefficient remained stable in sign and significance, though its magnitude decreased slightly. Decomposing obstacles into organizational-resource and regulatory-methodological dimensions preserved the positive association for both. Alternative operationalizations of the dependent variable, including a mandatory-disclosure index and a voluntary-disclosure index, yielded directionally consistent results. The authors also report consistency across covariance-based SEM, fixed-effects and random-effects regressions, generalized least squares, lagged specifications, two-stage least squares with instrumental predictors, probit and logit models, Heckman selection estimation, propensity score matching and a difference-in-differences design exploiting variation in ESG regulatory intensity across the four countries. Common method variance was assessed with Harman’s single-factor test and full collinearity checks, and Gaussian copula terms for endogeneity were statistically insignificant.

On the gender question, the multi-group analysis found no meaningful differences. For the motivations-to-reporting path, the coefficient difference between male and female groups was 0.006, with p-values of 0.083 under PLS-MGA, 0.091 under the Welch-Satterthwaite test and 0.089 under the parametric test, all above the 0.05 threshold and associated with a negligible effect size. For the obstacles-to-reporting path, the difference was 0.032, with p-values of 0.107, 0.286 and 0.135 respectively, again within a small-to-negligible effect size range. The authors conclude that gender does not significantly moderate either relationship in this sample, and suggest that both male and female professionals may be similarly inclined toward ESG reporting when organizational sustainability goals, stakeholder expectations and regulatory pressures apply uniformly. They caution that this null result contrasts with prior literature, much of it from developed economies, linking female leadership to stronger sustainability outcomes, and attribute the divergence to institutional contexts where structural pressures may outweigh individual demographic attributes.

The study carries clear limitations. It covers only agri-food companies in four emerging Asian economies, relies on self-reported questionnaire data rather than audited disclosure records, and excludes qualitative methods that could probe mechanisms in depth. The authors acknowledge that their metrics may not capture all ESG disclosure practices, drivers and impediments, and recommend larger samples, qualitative follow-up, comparisons with non-food companies, and future work on moderators such as board diversity, CSR committees and firm size. For policymakers, the practical message is twofold: strengthening ESG reporting frameworks and enforcement in the agri-food sector appears warranted given the sector’s environmental and social exposure, and governance reforms should not assume that gender diversity alone will automatically improve reporting outcomes. The authors suggest that authorities take proactive measures to reinforce ESG reporting assessment, and that institutional capability building, rather than demographic composition, may be the more reliable lever for improving disclosure quality in emerging markets.

Subject of Research: ESG reporting practices of agri-food companies in four Asian economies and the moderating role of gender

Article Title: Does gender influence ESG reporting practices of agri-food companies? Evidence from Asian economies

Article References: Shi, H., Zhou, Z., Zhou, Y., & Talukdar, B. (2026). Does gender influence ESG reporting practices of agri-food companies? Evidence from Asian economies. Agricultural and Food Economics, 14(1), Article 73. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-026-00511-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40100-026-00511-9

Keywords: ESG reporting, agri-food companies, Asia, gender moderation, PLS-SEM, sustainability disclosure, legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, emerging markets, survey research, corporate governance, Does