The Contributing Factors to Sustainability Reporting in Iran's Banking Industry

Purpose: Considering the influential role of banks in balancing the supply and demand for available financial resources, banks must disclose the social and environmental aspects of their financing activities in addition to the financial information disclosure requirements. The primary purpose of the research is to identify the factors influencing the formulation of the sustainability reporting framework in the banking industry.Design/methodology/approach: The current research is descriptive-survey type. Meta-composite qualitative analysis and fuzzy Delphi method are the data collection tools. In meta-composite qualitative analysis, concepts and critical indicators of sustainability reporting in the banking industry were extracted and classified by reviewing the relevant literature and interviewing experts. In the second step of the research, the fuzzy Delphi method was employed to confirm the validity of the concepts and critical factors of sustainability reporting.Findings: The most significant motivating factor for conducting this research is the lack of suffiecient academic studies that seek to aggregate different sustainability criteria and provide a multi-dimensional measure of sustainability for the banking industry. This research provides a comprehensive framework for sustainability reporting in the specific banking industry.

Keywords:

Sustainable Development , Sustainability reporting , Banking Industry