Do Sustainability Committees Mitigate or Exacerbate ESG Decoupling?

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impact of sustainability committees (SCs) on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) decoupling in US publicly listed firms. In particular, it examines their influence on overall and dimension‐specific (E, S, G) ESG decoupling and distinguishes their effects on internal versus external ESG actions. The study also tests whether external monitoring factors, including analyst coverage, institutional ownership, and media scrutiny, moderate the relationship between SCs and ESG decoupling. Using a sample of 2759 firms with 20,038 firm‐year observations from 2002 to 2021, we find that an SC significantly increases overall ESG decoupling, indicating that firms with SCs tend to disclose more external ESG claims without corresponding improvements in internal ESG practices. Dimension‐specific analyses show that SCs reduce environmental decoupling but increase social and governance decoupling, highlighting heterogeneous effects across ESG dimensions. Moderation analysis shows that analyst coverage strengthens ESG decoupling, institutional ownership mitigates it, and media scrutiny exerts mixed effects across ESG dimensions. Overall, the findings suggest that SCs promote symbolic rather than substantive ESG practices, thus exacerbating ESG decoupling, particularly in social and governance domains.