**5. Conclusions and Implications**

Our study makes some contributions to the literature regarding CSR. First of all, this article is one of the few attempts to use specific financial indicators to examine the decisions of companies from the energy sector regarding the implementation of CSR. While other researchers attempted to investigate the impact of overall financial performance on CSR, they were not able to discern different forms of response to financial performance feedback, because they did not analyze the effect of individual financial metrics separately. Secondly, while the energy sector has a significant environmental and social impact, no empirical cross-sectional study specific to the industry has been carried out so far from an international database of large companies. As far as we know, no previous studies on this topic have focused on a sample of international firms. Third, although the analyzed studies examined the links between companies' financial results and CSR, they are insufficiently investigated in the energy sector. Analyzing CSR adoption as a dependent variable is used to a limited extent and is not the subject of any research in the energy sector. By using this dummy variable, the results for CSR could be easily compared with other studies. Due to the variety of CSR measures, the possibility of comparing the results concerning CSR is limited. Therefore, this study adds new evidence to the existing literature by providing an empirical analysis of the relationship between FP and CSR adoption in the energy sector. The impact of the FP on CSR adoption in the energy sector has not been investigated so far. Therefore, our goal is to reduce this research gap.

Our findings also have some managemen<sup>t</sup> implications. The results of our study may be helpful in the further understanding of the motivation of companies' decisions in the field of CSR implementation. CSR activities are becoming more and more important for the sustainable business of companies, ensuring the legitimacy and facilitating exchange relations with their stakeholders [1,25]. We show that companies are more likely to engage in CSR activities when they achieve better financial results, as measured by the ROA ratio. The relationship between other financial measures and CSR adoption is not so clear.

Our study also offers a methodological improvement through the use of the binary logit regression model, which allows the determining of the likelihood that a company will engage in CSR, taking into account its financial characteristics. This approach avoids measurement errors encountered in studies aiming to determine whether there is a positive relationship between CSR investments and the financial results [74].

CSR has become an important research area for researchers looking into its relationship with other variables, such as financial performance. This study shows that, compared to other financial ratios, the size of the ROA has the most significant impact on shaping the company's CSR policy. This evidence is based on the financial characteristics of energy sector companies with a number of full-time employees higher than 150. Other financial ratios examined include ROE, EBIT, Enterprise Value to EBITDA, EBITDA per Share, and Beta coefficient. However, most of the studied variables turned out to be statistically insignificant.

The approach in this study differs from previous studies, as CSR is measured as a binary variable, assuming values of 1 for companies that have implemented CSR and 0 for other cases. CSR is then linked to the size of the financial ratios under study using the binary logit regression model in this categorical form. The analysis results show that CSR is a positive function only for ROA and a negative growth function of the Enterprise Value to EBITDA. Clarifying the relationship between FP and CSR adoption is critical to promoting the implementation of CSR in all business companies and communities in every country worldwide [50].
