The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on firm performance. The study examines the SDG coverage of international firms in six industries listed in the Corporate Knights’ Index, including banking, insurance, petroleum refineries, real estate investment and services, and investment services. Through a content analysis approach, the annual and sustainable reports of these firms for the year 2020 were used to extract financial and SDG information, respectively. The findings indicate that SDG coverage has no effect on firm performance. The results also show that SDGs 5, 8, and 13 appear to be the most widely adopted SDGs by companies from all industries, while SDGs 2, 6, and 14 tend to be the least focused on of all SDGs. This study can assist regulators and investors in better understanding the role of SDGs in achieving an organization’s success.

To enhance environmental governance for sustainable development, China has made efforts to address environmental issues through formal institutions. The enactment of the new Environmental Protection Law (EPL) in 2015 exerted new institutional pressures on heavy-polluting firms. Our study focuses on examining the phenomenon of greenwashing among these firms after the implementation of EPL. Using difference-in-difference model, we identify that EPL results in an increase in greenwashing behavior by heavy-polluting firms. Furthermore, our research reveals that while EPL implementation enhances disclosure performance in heavy-polluting firms, there is no tangible improvement in substantive environmental performance. These results are supported by various robustness tests that affirm their reliability. Additionally, we uncover that government subsidies exacerbate greenwashing in heavy-polluting firms. In contrast, the availability of slack resources diminishes the impact of EPL on greenwashing behavior. This study not only enhances the understanding of the mechanism of the impact between EPL and firm greenwashing, but also offers suggestions to help the government for better environmental governance as well as firms to engage in environmental behaviors and sustainability.

The present study examines the impact of COVID-19 on Maldivian tourism, highlighting the loss of tourists and tourism earnings for the period 2020Q1 to 2021Q2 and analyses the recovery rate of inbound tourists’ arrivals post border re-opening (i.e., 2020Q3 – 2021Q2). Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model was employed to generate monthly forecasts for 2020 and 2021. The results indicate an estimated loss of 1.9 million tourists between 2020Q1 and 2021Q2. A massive drop in tourist arrivals caused an estimated loss of USD 3.5 billion in tourism earnings by June 2021. Results further indicate that with an average monthly recovery rate of 3%, inbound arrivals have recovered 34% of forecasted levels and 40% of 2019 levels by June 2021. The measures implemented by the government of Maldives played a vital role in the recovery of inbound tourism. However, the rebound of tourists has not reached the desired levels except for the arrivals from Russia. Therefore, additional strategies must be implemented for the quick revival of the Maldivian tourism industry. This study expands and enriches tourism management knowledge in the face of a massive crisis highlighting important managerial and policy implications for reviving the tourism industry of the Maldives.

The tourism sector of the Maldives has seen rapid growth since its inception in 1972. One significant development is the transformation of the market composition in recent years. China has surpassed traditional European markets as the single largest source market. In this regard, this study seeks to assess the seasonality in the Maldivian tourism sector using a monthly dataset of visitor arrivals from 2003 to 2019. The seasonality ratio, the seasonality indicator, the Gini coefficient and the seasonal index were used to examine the seasonality patterns. The results of this study show that there are three distinct peaks (January to April, August, and November to December) and two off-peaks (May to July and September) periods. The findings also reveal that the rise of the Chinese market has significantly lessened the seasonality of Maldivian inbound tourism. Finally, some important implications are discussed.