The Impact of Artificial Intelligence Adoption on ESG Disclosure Quality and Financial Performance in the Tehran Stock Exchange: Testing the Mediating Role of Disclosure

The main objective of this study is to measure the effect of AI adoption in Iranian listed companies during 2015-2016 on improving the quality of environmental, social responsibility, and corporate governance disclosure and its impact on improving the financial performance of companies. Using panel regression with industry and year fixed effects and two-stage estimation with instrumental variables (using the average disclosure quality of peers at the industry-year level and regulatory guidance as instruments), the results show that AI adoption significantly increases disclosure quality; instrumental disclosure quality has a positive and significant effect on return on assets (approximate coefficient 0.0016) and return on equity (approximate coefficient 0.0018), but is not significant on Tobin's Ki-Ratio. Bootstrap mediation analysis also shows that a large part of the effect of AI adoption on accounting returns is transmitted through the disclosure quality improvement channel (estimated mediation coefficient for return on assets ≈1.01 and for return on equity ≈0.98), while it is not significant for Tobin’s QI (estimated coefficient ≈0.85). The robustness of the results to alternative measures, size and industry subsamples, and the addition of macro controls was confirmed, implying that AI-supported reporting systems improve transparency and operational efficiencies, although the reflection of this improvement in market valuations likely requires a longer time horizon and stronger capital market institutions.