Title:
EQUITY FINANCING AND ESG ORIENTATION: AN ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS PERSPECTIVE

Authors:
Duong Thi Huong Lien, Vietnam

Abstract:
This study examines ESG priorities under equity financing using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the context of Vietnamese listed firms. Rather than investigating causal relationships, the research adopts a multi-criteria decision-making approach to evaluate the relative importance of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) dimensions and their underlying factors based on expert judgments. The AHP framework is employed to structure ESG criteria hierarchically and to derive priority weights through pairwise comparisons, ensuring consistency and reliability of the results. The findings reveal a clear hierarchy of ESG priorities under equity financing. The environmental dimension receives the highest weight, followed by governance, while social factors are assigned comparatively lower priority. At the factor level, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and renewable energy investment emerge as the most important environmental considerations, whereas transparency and accountability dominate governance priorities. Social factors are primarily valued when they directly contribute to workforce stability and operational effectiveness. These results suggest that equity financing is closely aligned with strategic, long-term ESG considerations, particularly in the environmental and governance domains. By applying AHP, this study contributes methodologically to the ESG literature and provides practical insights for managers and policymakers in emerging markets where standardized ESG data remain limited.