Does sustainability pay off? Evidence from a staggered DID analysis on Italian BCorps

In recent years, sustainability has become a strategic lever for firms seeking to remain competitive while handling multiple interests and responding to growing external and internal social and environmental stimuli. Within this context, and considering the heterogenous hybrid organizational structure, BCorp has emerged as the prominent one, allowing to balance economic viability with social and environmental goals. Moreover, BCorp certification itself has gained prominence in the economic and managerial debate related to its usefulness for achieving some measurable economic benefits. Against this backdrop, this study aims at investigating the effect of B Corp certification on firms’ economic performance, evaluated through two complementary, yet related, performance measures: operating profitability, measured by return on assets (ROA), and operational efficiency, measured by the ratio of sales revenues to total assets. We focus on a sample of 101 Italian BCorps, certified in the period 2018-2022, and using a 1:1 nearest neighbor approach, we identify a control group of 101 non-certified matching firms. On the final sample of 202 Ital firms, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design. Our results suggest that embarking on a certification path does not guarantee short-term gains, as it does not have a statistically significant effect on both profitability and operational efficiency. Overall, our findings suggest that B Corp certification should not be interpreted as a short-term driver of financial returns, but rather as a strategic investment in organizational alignment, sustainability integration, and long-term capability building. In doing so, our study contributes to the broad literature on sustainability certification and economic performance, while providing some evaluable insights for firms seeking to approach sustainability through a certification path.