**4.1 Descriptive statistics**

**Table 2** presents the descriptive statistics. It shows the minimum value, maximum value, average and standard deviation. The dependent variable, ROA, has an average value of 0.398 with a standard deviation of 0.0689. Thus, on average result before taxes and interest represent 3.98% of total assets of companies of our study. The average firm visibility variable equals 5.69% with a standard deviation of 0.1466 suggesting high dispersion between the companies of our sample.


*The Moderating Effect of Firm Visibility on the Corporate Social Responsibility-Firm Financial… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95861*

The averages of the control variables are 3.670 for firm age, 9.996 for firm size, 0.7328 for leverage and 0.0486 for R&D intensity.

The mean value of overall ESG score for all the companies in our sample over the period studied is 0.5787 with a standard deviation of 0.1852. This score did not change significantly over the analysis period with a maximum recorded in 2015 (65.91%) and a minimum of 49.43% in 2011. For international comparison, the average ESG score observed on a sample of 94 Korean companies listed on the KOSPI (Korea Stock Exchange) over the period 2008–2014 is close to 46%. According to the rating agency Novethic, the average ESG score of European companies is 45.4% in 2017.
