Public Accounting in the Era of Sustainability

• Carlo Santos

  Department of Economics and Business Economics

  Author

• Carlo Santos

  Department of Economics and Business Economics

  Author

• Patricia Reyes

  Department of Economics and Business Economics

  Author

• Luis Torres

  Department of Economics and Business Economics

  Author

Purpose—This study investigates how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance relates to conventional financial-audit outcomes and how Philippine auditors perceive the expanding demand for sustainability-related assurance. Design/methodology/approach—The original study combines a reported panel of 156 Philippine Stock Exchange–listed firms (780 firm-year observations, 2018–2023) with semi-structured interviews involving 27 audit professionals. The quantitative component reports fixed-effects regressions, a logistic model and structural equation modelling; the qualitative component identifies recurring professional and institutional themes. Findings—The reported associations indicate that stronger ESG performance accompanies shorter audit delays, higher financial-audit fees and lower odds of non-standard audit opinions. Board and audit-committee characteristics are also associated with ESG-related outcomes. Interview participants most frequently highlighted sustainability skills gaps (25/27), evolving professional responsibilities (24/27) and regulatory uncertainty (22/27). Originality/value—By integrating firm-level audit indicators with practitioners’ perspectives, the article clarifies how ESG information can alter audit planning, oversight and professional capacity in an emerging-market setting. The findings are associational, not causal; raw data and original estimation outputs remain necessary for independent verification of reported inferential statistics.

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Copyright (c) 2026 Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.