doi: 10.18178/joebm.2026.14.3.956
ESG Risk Profiles Among S&P 500 Companies: A Comparative Analysis of Low and High Risk Firms
Hongli Jiao
- Santa Margarita Catholic High School, Rancho Santa Margarita, California, USA
- Manuscript received July 2, 2026
- accepted September 18, 2026
- published September 30, 2026
Abstract
This study provides a transparent descriptive comparison of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk profiles among S&P 500 companies using a publicly available ESG Risk Ratings dataset. The downloaded file contains 503 company observations, of which 430 have a valid Total ESG Risk Score. The analytical sample is constructed mechanically by selecting the 25 firms with the lowest Total ESG Risk Scores and the 25 firms with the highest scores. The two groups are compared on total ESG risk, Environmental, Social, and Governance risk components, controversy measures, and sector composition. The Low-ESG-Risk group has an average Total ESG Risk Score of 10.46, compared with 36.51 for the High-ESG-Risk group. The largest component difference appears in Environmental Risk, while the two groups also differ substantially in sector composition: Real Estate and Technology are prominent in the low-risk group, whereas Energy and Industrials dominate the high-risk group. These findings are descriptive rather than causal and illustrate both the usefulness and the limitations of a simple, reproducible public-data approach to ESG analysis.
How to Cite
Hongli Jiao, "ESG Risk Profiles Among S&P 500 Companies: A Comparative Analysis of Low and High Risk Firms," Journal of Economics, Business and Management, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 275-278, 2026. https://doi.org/10.18178/joebm.2026.14.3.956
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).