Corporate Responsibility Reporting and its Determinants in Comparative Perspective – a Review of the Empirical Literature and a Meta‐analysis

For four decades, reporting on corporate responsibility by businesses has been the subject of empirical research. In the 1970s and 1980s, studies mostly originated from Anglo‐Saxon and Western European countries. During the last two decades research on responsibility reporting was increasingly undertaken in emerging and developing countries as well – always following the reporting practices of the respective businesses. Consequentially, a very large number of studies exist today. Many of these have empirically investigated the determinants of responsibility reporting and examined whether internal factors like size and industry or external factors like stakeholder pressures have an impact on disclosure. Thus, the purpose of the following paper is twofold. First, it seeks to provide an overview of the existing literature in order to facilitate further research. Overall, 186 studies have been examined for the determinants which they considered and have been grouped according to their geographical origin. This provides for an analysis of whether academics from different regions have taken different approaches to the empirical examination of responsibility reporting and if their results differed. The findings show that scholars across regions have taken different paths in empirical research, but indications for a variation in the impact of specific determinants on reporting are weak. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Does designing environmental sustainability disclosure quality measures make a difference?

Assessing the quality of information disclosed by companies is a complex task. Accounting studies usually rely on analysing the content of corporate reports using measures to obtain a proxy for the information reported by companies. However, there is no consensus about the best design for these measures. The objective of the current paper is to investigate if there are significant differences in the results generated from seven alternative measures for assessing the quality of FTSE100 environmental sustainability reporting. Seven measures/indices have been used to assess disclosure quality. The three unidimensional measures include two “quantity measures” and one “scope measure” that measure the volume and width/coverage of information, respectively. Three compound measures are adopted from the literature, and the final measure is a multidimensional quality model, based on the results of a questionnaire ascertaining the perceptions of 86 preparers and 177 users of annual report (AR) and/stand‐alone corporate responsibility report (CRR). Although the results of the empirical analysis indicate that the measures are significantly correlated, the choice of a specific method can result in the very different ranking of companies. The evidence presented indicates that the choice of measure is of key importance.     

浙江省中小企业信息披露质量与股权融资实证分析

中小企业融资难在融资景气指数下降的环境下更显突出。本文以2010年中小企业板块的浙江公司为样本,研究其信息披露质量与股权融资成本间的关系,采用剩余收益模型计算股权融资成本,通过多元回归证明,中小企业信息披露质量对其股权融资成本同样会产生正面影响,基此提出了应对建议。     

Does Innovation Drive Environmental Disclosure? A New Insight into Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a hot topic in business and the media, and there is a growing demand for reliable environmental disclosure from a wide range of stakeholders. Ethical performance, including social and environmental performance, is actively scrutinized. A firm's stakeholders expect reliable disclosure to correctly assess its performance. Research on the link between environmental disclosure and environmental performance shows mixed results. Both a positive and a negative association have been found. This study reexamines this association by considering environmental innovation as a key determinant of environmental disclosure. We find that environmental performance and environmental innovation jointly determine environmental disclosure. At low levels of environmental performance, innovative firms tend to disclose more than their non‐innovative counterparts to inform stakeholders about their innovation and strategy to obtain an improved environmental performance. This disclosure gap tends to diminish as innovative firms become better environmental performers. The higher levels of environmental disclosure are closely associated with firms' environmental performance for both groups. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

企业的环境业绩与环境信息披露：一个日渐重要的商誉构成要素

随着环境污染问题成为世界各地的一个日益突出的经济、社会和政治问题，企业的环境业绩与环境信息披露与社会越来越息息相关，成为公众评价企业的一个重要因素，从而也成为构成企业商誉的一个重要因素。本文通遇分析认为，企业的环境业绩主要通遇影响企业的公共形象和产品形象退而影响企业获取超额利润；企业的环境信息披露则主要通遍影响利益关系人对企业的认知度退而影响企业的超额获利能力。     

环境会计与报告:具有信息含量吗?

在国际和国内资本市场,最近一些年来主动发布环境报告和披露环境信息的公司明显增加,尤其是重污染行业上市公司,披露环境信息已经成为越来越普遍的做法。公司发布报告和披露信息的目的,是向投资人和资本市场传递有用信息。但是,目前环境报告和环境信息披露的基本格局是重信息数量、轻信息质量,就相关性而言,信息含量并不高。这是因为,对于环境报告和披露环境信息,没有清晰的界定。在会计界,对于环境会计缺少作为核算对象的共识。如果将环境会计看作一个新的开发领域,应该先聚焦于环境成本。     

Corporate climate-related voluntary disclosures: Does potential greenwash exist among Australian high emitters reports?

This study examines the issue of greenwashing among corporate high emitters subject to government scrutiny. To do so, we investigate the relationship between the actual environmental performance, measured as carbon emissions, of companies subject to the Australian National Greenhouse Energy Reporting Act 2007 (NGER) and their climate-related voluntary disclosures. To measure climate-related disclosure, we construct a climate-related disclosure index based on four prominent frameworks and score corporate report content against that Index. Using a sample of 150 companies with NGER emissions data for Years 2016 and 2017, a period that precedes the issuance of recommendations for disclosure by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), our regression results show a disappointingly low level of climate-related disclosure by most companies. We also find a negative relationship between climate-related disclosure and 1-year lagged environmental performance among companies exhibiting a year-on-year rise in carbon emissions. That is, our findings provide evidence of potential greenwashing by poor environmental performers, presumably to change negative perceptions by stakeholders, as predicted by socio-political theories. In contrast, we find no evidence of greenwashing among companies experiencing a year-on-year decrease in emissions.     

The Effects of Negative Incidents in Sustainability Reporting on Investors’ Judgments–an Experimental Study of Third‐party Versus Self‐disclosure in the Realm of Sustainable Development

This study examines how the disclosure of negative sustainability‐related incidents affects the investment‐related judgments of decision‐makers. Participants in a sequential 2 × 2 between‐subjects experiment first received a company's financial information before viewing additional sustainability information (by the company and by a non‐governmental organization (NGO); with and without negative disclosure). Results indicate that self‐reporting of negative incidents does not affect decision‐makers’ stock price estimates and investment decisions compared with judgments based on financial information only. However, third‐party disclosure of these incidents by a NGO has a negative affect on these investment‐related judgments. Furthermore, the magnitude of the NGO reporting effect depends on whether the company itself simultaneously reports these incidents. Thus, disclosing negative incidents in sustainability reporting could lose some of its apparent stigma. Instead of avoiding negative reporting altogether, managers might use it as a risk mitigation tool in their reporting strategy. The results also emphasize the power of the often‐mentioned ‘watchdog’ function of NGOs acting as stakeholder advocates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment