This paper examines the relationship between firms' sustainability practices and their value during a crisis when overall trust and support are lacking in the economy. While a handful of studies explore this research agenda concentrating on the US context and a standalone crisis, we provide novel evidence on the Asia Pacific region considering three global crises. Applying difference‐in‐differences regressions, we find that high‐sustainability companies posted superior value during the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis. This result, however, does not hold for the COVID‐19 crisis. This key finding passes several endogeneity tests (firm‐fixed effect, propensity score matching, and post‐crisis interaction). As we explore potential mechanisms of firm resistance during crises and apply a triple difference approach, we find evidence that firm value was intensified during the crises due to sustainability activities coupled with high customer loyalty, high institutional ownership, and a low degree of information asymmetry. Finally, although high sustainability performance generally positively impacted firm value during crises, this relationship was negative (weaker) for the highly impacted industries (the emerging countries) included in the sample. Our key finding continues to hold for a set of robustness checks. The outcome of this study provides significant policy directions to regulators, corporate managers, and investment professionals.

中文翻译：

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在全球危机期间，企业的可持续发展实践是否能带来回报？来自亚洲及太平洋地区的证据

本文探讨了在经济缺乏整体信任和支持的危机期间，企业的可持续发展实践与其价值之间的关系。虽然少数研究探讨了这一研究议程，重点关注美国背景和一场独立的危机，但我们提供了有关亚太地区考虑三场全球危机的新证据。应用双重差分回归，我们发现高可持续性公司在全球金融危机和欧洲债务危机期间表现出卓越的价值。然而，这一结果并不适用于 COVID-19 危机。这一关键发现通过了多项内生性检验（公司固定效应、倾向评分匹配和危机后互动）。当我们探索危机期间企业抵抗的潜在机制并应用三重差异方法时，我们发现有证据表明，由于可持续发展活动以及高客户忠诚度、高机构所有权和低程度的信息不对称，企业价值在危机期间得到了增强。最后，尽管在危机期间高可持续性表现通常会对企业价值产生积极影响，但对于样本中受影响较大的行业（新兴国家）来说，这种关系是负面的（较弱）。我们的主要发现仍然适用于一系列稳健性检查。这项研究的结果为监管机构、企业管理者和投资专业人士提供了重要的政策方向。