Board Cultural Diversity and Corporate Sustainability Performance: Evidence From Hospitality and Tourism Firms

This paper examines whether board cultural diversity is associated with corporate sustainability performance (CSP) in the hospitality and tourism sector. Drawing on upper echelons theory and resource dependence theory, the analysis uses LSEG ESG data for 282 publicly listed firms across 49 countries, covering 1406 firm-year observations from 2018 to 2023. The results show that board cultural diversity, board gender diversity, board independence, and sustainability committee presence are positively associated with CSP. By contrast, CEO duality and board size are negatively associated with sustainability performance. Additional analyses using lagged specifications, firm fixed effects, country-group regressions, region-year fixed effects and environmental and social pillar scores provide further evidence of the stability of the reported associations. The paper contributes to sustainability governance research by showing that board cultural diversity remains relevant when examined alongside established governance characteristics. The findings also offer sector-specific evidence from hospitality and tourism, where sustainability performance is closely linked to stakeholder relationships, reputation and board-level oversight.