The growing sensitivity of stakeholders towards health, food safety and environmental protection has pushed agri-food companies to embrace a new way of doing business, making huge investments to reduce their impact on ecosystem. However, these efforts would be in vain if not properly communicated, especially to financial institutions and investors, as they are the fundamental and supportive stakeholders. Through non-financial disclosure, indeed, this greater transparency would translate into benefits, such as creditworthiness, lower risks and costs of capital. From these considerations, this study aims at verifying to what extent the implementation of sustainability strategies can affect the overall cost of capital, observed in its dual form: debt and equity. In particular, through panel data analyses, it tested how non-financial disclosure—measured by Bloomberg's disclosure scores—could influence the cost of capital of a sample of 73 international agricultural firms observed from 2015 to 2019. The results showed a significant and negative relationship, suggesting that a higher level of disclosure could be effective in lowering firms' financial burden. This study contributes to the literature on non-financial disclosure and cost of capital as it studies this phenomenon in a sector in which previous research is limited.

中文翻译：

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非财务披露在影响资本成本方面的相关性：来自农业食品部门的经验证据

利益相关者对健康、食品安全和环境保护的日益敏感促使农业食品公司采用新的经营方式，进行巨额投资以减少对生态系统的影响。然而，如果没有适当沟通，这些努力将是徒劳的，尤其是与金融机构和投资者沟通，因为他们是基本的和支持性的利益相关者。事实上，通过非财务披露，这种更高的透明度将转化为好处，例如信誉度、更低的风险和资本成本。基于这些考虑，本研究旨在验证可持续发展战略的实施在多大程度上影响资本的总体成本，以其双重形式观察：债务和股权。特别是通过面板数据分析，它测试了 2015 年至 2019 年观察到的 73 家国际农业公司样本的非财务披露（根据彭博的披露分数衡量）如何影响资本成本。结果显示出显着的负相关关系，表明更高水平的披露可以有效减轻企业的财务负担。本研究对非财务信息披露和资本成本的文献做出了贡献，因为它研究了以前研究有限的部门中的这种现象。