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Multidimensional spatiotemporal clustering -- An application to environmental sustainability scores in Europe

Caterina Morelli, Simone Boccaletti, Paolo Maranzano, Philipp Otto

arXiv 30 May 2024 · Statistics — Applications · publishedEnvironmetrics (2025) · 9 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2405.20191 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The assessment of corporate sustainability performance is extremely relevant in facilitating the transition to a green and low-carbon intensity economy. However, companies located in different areas may be subject to different sustainability and environmental risks and policies. Henceforth, the main objective of this paper is to investigate the spatial and temporal pattern of the sustainability evaluations of European firms. We leverage on a large dataset containing information about companies' sustainability performances, measured by MSCI ESG ratings, and geographical coordinates of firms in Western Europe between 2013 and 2023. By means of a modified version of the Chavent et al. (2018) hierarchical algorithm, we conduct a spatial clustering analysis, combining sustainability and spatial information, and a spatiotemporal clustering analysis, which combines the time dynamics of multiple sustainability features and spatial dissimilarities, to detect groups of firms with homogeneous sustainability performance. We are able to build cross-national and cross-industry clusters with remarkable differences in terms of sustainability scores. Among other results, in the spatio-temporal analysis, we observe a high degree of geographical overlap among clusters, indicating that the temporal dynamics in sustainability assessment are relevant within a multidimensional approach. Our findings help to capture the diversity of ESG ratings across Western Europe and may assist practitioners and policymakers in evaluating companies facing different sustainability-linked risks in different areas.

Citation extraction

49
references
70
in-text mentions
49
distinct cited
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9,786
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix” · 81% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Chavent, M., Kuentz-Simonet, V., Labenne, A., and Saracco, J (2018) ClustGeo: an R package for hierarchical clustering with spatial constraints1.000144100%
2Mattera, R. and Franses, P. H (2023) Are african business cycles synchronized? evidence from spatio-temporal modeling0.58531100%
3Ortas, E., Álvarez, I., Jaussaud, J., and Garayar, A (2015) The impact of institutional and social context on corporate environmental, social and governance performance of companies commit…0.58531100%
4Amores-Salvadó, J., Martin-de Castro, G., and Albertini, E (2023) Walking the talk, but above all, talking the walk: Looking green for market stakeholder engagement0.51121100%
5Gonzaga, B. R., Klotzle, M. C., Brugni, T. V., Rakos, I.-S., Cioca,… (2024) The ESG patterns of emerging-market companies: Are there differences in their sustainable behavior after covid-19?0.51121100%
6Ronalter, L. M., Bernardo, M., and Romaní, J. M (2023) Quality and environmental management systems as business tools to enhance ESG performance: a cross-regional empirical study0.51121100%
7Wang, Q (2023) Herding behavior and the dynamics of ESG performance in the european banking industry0.51121100%
8Alfalih, A. A (2023) ESG disclosure practices and financial performance: a general and sector analysis of SP-500 non-financial companies and the mode…0.40511100%
9Bucci, A., Ippoliti, L., and Valentini, P (2023) Analysing spatiotemporal patterns of Covid-19 confirmed deaths at the NUTS-2 regional level0.40511100%
10Chen, Y. P. V., Zhuo, Z., Huang, Z., and Li, W (2022) Environmental regulation and ESG of SMEs in China: Porter hypothesis re-tested0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 49 scored citations.