To succeed in the business world, organisations need to provide reliable and credible efforts to their stakeholders, to ensure that their business activities would not harm the safety of stakeholders in the area where they are operating. The operation of business conducts in recent time, changes drastically due to the emergence of an increasing number of external factors which impose on corporate performance. Hence, this study examined the impact of social costs on the financial performance of listed firms in Nigeria. The study adopted ex-post facto research designs. Secondary data sourced from the published annual reports of 52 firms, purposively selected for a period of 11 years (2008 to 2018), giving 572 firm-year observations. Data analysed by panel data regression of pooled OLS, random effects, fixed effects models and the Feasible General Least Squares (FGLS) regression for the objectives. Findings revealed that Social Costs (SOCO) had significant and positive effect on ROA (R2 = 0.42, β = 0.202, t(570) = 4.869, p < 0.05). In addition there is evidence that SOCO, firm age, firm size and leverage jointly exerted significant effect on ROA (Adj.R2 = 0.608, F(6, 565) = 5904.01, p < 0.05). The study concluded that social costs have a significant impact on the financial performance of listed firms in Nigeria. It recommended that the practice of elimination of social costs should be intensified by corporate firms to improve on their business reputation.
Keywords: Leverage, Return on Assets, business reputation, firm age, firm size, social costs
