Effect of Audit Committee Characteristics on Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures of Listed Banks in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigates the crucial link between Audit Committee (AC) attributes and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure among listed Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) in Nigeria. Using stakeholder and agency theories, we analysed three key AC attributes: size, independence, and meeting frequency. By purposively selecting 12 banks from a total of 14 and extracting data from annual reports from 2012 to 2022, we employed random effect as statistical technique. Our findings reveal that a larger Audit Committee significantly enhances CSR disclosure (λ=0.066; p<0.05), highlighting the importance of AC size in promoting effective stakeholder engagement and improving corporate transparency in the banking sector. AC independents have favourable and substantial effect on CSR disclosure (λ= 0.4627; p<0.05), indicates that the AC independence can hold management accountable for CSR commitments. AC meetings have favourable and substantial effect on CSR Disclosure (λ= 0.0376; p<0.10), suggests that regular AC meetings allow the audit committee to quickly respond to emerging issues related to CSR. The study concluded that AC attributes have substantially influence the (CSR) disclosure of DMBs in Nigeria. The study recommended that banks should consider increasing the audit committee size to enhance oversight and governance.