Is the private sector becoming cleaner? Assessing the firms’ contribution to the 2030 Agenda

Since the 2030 Agenda was released in 2015, private companies have been called to play an active role in delivering the SDGs. Understanding their progress is therefore critical. This paper focuses on identifying those SDGs to which firms contribute the most, along with the effects of some factors on such contribution. The firms' contribution is assessed by a manual content analysis of 385 sustainability reports published between 2016 and 2020 by companies of different sizes, industries, and regions. Its significance is then evaluated using logistic regression and RIDIT analysis. Results indicate that the firms’ overall contribution to the SDGs is still symbolic and mostly a matter of legitimacy-seeking. Size, industry, and region strongly affect the magnitude of such a contribution, whereas no significant time trend is observed. The results also show that firms are most likely to contribute to goals related to economic and environmental targets. Overall, this research sheds further light on the actual contribution of firms to the SDGs and calls for a set of actions to boost the present low adoption of the 2030 Agenda.