Material sustainability information and reporting standards. Exploring the differences between GRI and SASB

This paper aims to contribute to the emerging debate on materiality with novel and original insights about the managerial and theoretical implications related to the adoption of GRI and SASB as reporting standards. Furthermore, the paper will evaluate the main drivers that favored the combination of the two standards by companies to develop new knowledge about the hierarchical relationship between financial and sustainability materiality. Building on a sample of 2046 US Listed Companies observed during the period between 2017 and 2020, the research was conducted using quantitative methods. In particular, multinomial logistic regressions (MLR) were used to evaluate the differences between GRI and SASB’s adoption. The analysis highlighted that financial and sustainability materiality are driven by different purposes. In detail, SASB’s adoption is driven by factors directly related to financial dynamics while GRI’s adoption is influenced by the existence of corporate governance mechanisms inspired by sustainable and ethical principles. Furthermore, the last analysis revealed that the combination of the two standards is characterized by the predominance of sustainability materiality. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study about the relationship between financial and sustainability materiality