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This paper aims to explore current trends in how companies disclose climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements. As part of the authors’ analysis, they examine: whether forward-looking assumptions and judgements are typically considered in reporting climate-related risks/opportunities; whether there are differences in the reporting practices of firms in carbon-intensive industries versus non-carbon-intensive industries; and whether negative media reports have an influence on the levels of disclosure a firm makes.

The authors chose content analysis as their methodology and examined the financial statements published by firms listed on the UK’s FTSE 100 between 2016 and 2020. This analysis is framed by Suchman’s three dimensions of legitimacy, being pragmatic, cognitive and moral.

Climate-related disclosures in the notes and financial accounts of these firms did increase over the period. Yet, overall, the level the disclosures was inadequate and the quality was inconsistent. From this, the authors conclude that pragmatic legitimacy is not a particularly strong driving factor in compelling organisations to disclose climate-related information. The firms in carbon-intensive industries do provide greater levels of disclosure, including both qualitative and quantitative (monetary) content, which is consistent with cognitive legitimacy. However, from a moral legitimacy perspective, this study finds that firms did not adapt responsively to negative media coverage as a way of reflecting their accountability to broader public norms and values. Overall, this analysis suggests that regulatory enforcement and a systematic reporting framework with adequate guidance is going to be critical to developing transparent climate-related reporting in future.

This paper contributes to existing studies on climate-related disclosures, which have mainly examined the ‘front-half’ of annual reports. Conversely, this study aims to shed light on these practices in the “back-half” of these reports, exploring the underlying reasons for reporting climate-related risks and opportunities in financial accounts. The authors’ insights into the current disclosure practices make a theoretical contribution to the literature. Practitioners can also draw on these insights to improve how they report on climate-related risks and opportunities in their financial statements.

This study examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on voluntary corporate carbon disclosure in Bangladeshi firms.

To investigate the association between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate carbon disclosures, this study employs ordinary least square (OLS) methods. To mitigate the potential endogeneity concerns, the authors also introduce firm fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE). Primarily, the study sample includes 250 firm-year observations over the period 2015–2019 for listed companies on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in Bangladesh. Subsequently, corporate governance mechanisms that influence voluntary carbon disclosure were examined using both univariate and OLS models.

The findings of this study suggest that firms with a larger board size and more independent directors have a positive impact on the firm's intensity to disclose carbon-related information. However, no evidence has been found of the existence of an environmental committee, and the presence of female directors on the board tends to be associated with a higher level of voluntary corporate carbon disclosure.

The study offers necessary evidence of the determinants of corporate carbon disclosures, which will be useful for managers, senior executives, policymakers and regulatory bodies. To improve corporate governance practices and formulate separate sets of regulations and reporting criteria, disclosing extensive and holistic carbon-related information obligatory. Further, the outcomes of this study based on Bangladeshi firms can be comprehensive for other developing countries to take precautions to tackle the effect of global climate change.

In this study, the authors examine the relationships between market-based regulations and corporate carbon disclosure and carbon performance. The authors also investigate whether these relationships vary across emission-intensive and non-emission intensive industries.

The study sample consists of the world's 500 largest companies across most major industries over a recent five-year period. Country-specific random effect multiple regression analysis is used to test empirical models that predict relationships between market-based regulations and carbon disclosure and carbon performance.

Results indicate that market-based regulations significantly and positively affect corporate carbon performance. However, market-based regulations do not significantly affect corporate carbon disclosure. This study also finds that the association between regulatory pressures and carbon disclosure and carbon performance varies across emission-intensive and non-emission-intensive industries.

The findings of this study have key implications for policymakers, practitioners and future researchers in terms of understanding the factors that drive businesses to increase their carbon performance and disclosure. The study sample consists of only large firms, and future researchers can undertake similar studies with small and medium-sized firms.

The results of this study are expected to help business managers to identify the benefits of adopting market-based regulations. Regulators can use this study’s results to evaluate if market-based regulations effectively improve corporate carbon performance and disclosure. Furthermore, stakeholders may use this study to evaluate and improve their businesses' reporting of carbon disclosure and performance.

In contrast to current literature that has used command and control regulations as a proxy for regulation, this study uses market-based regulations as a proxy for climate change regulations. In addition, this study uses a more comprehensive measure of carbon disclosure and carbon performance compared to the previous studies. It also uses global multi-sector data from carbon disclosure project (CDP) in contrast to most current studies that use national data from annual reports of sample firms of specific sectors.

Corporations, as key contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, have been increasingly scrutinized by governments and stakeholders. Corporations have been asked to disclose their carbon-related information. This study investigates public corporate carbon disclosure, an imperative communication channel between firms.

This study uses generalized estimation equation models with a longitudinal panel data of 311 listed firms in the China A-share stock index from 2010 to 2020. This study collected firm-level data from the Carbon Disclosure Project survey, the China Stock Market and Accounting Research, and the National Economic Research Institute of China. Stata was used as the primary statistic software in empirical analyses.

This study finds that compared to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), private firms are more willing to disclose carbon information under legitimate environmental pressure, and firms in highly distorted factor-markets are reluctant to disclose carbon information. This study finds that factor-distortion markets further moderate ownership and lead private firms in highly distorted factor-markets to behave like SOEs by significantly reducing their carbon disclosures.

This study intends to contribute to the corporate carbon disclosure literature by adding important institutional determinants to the conversation in the context of China.

This study investigated the visibility of carbon emissions allowances accounting in the financial reports of 32 clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in the UAE to uncover the obstacles to setting consistent standards for carbon emission accounting. As carbon emissions are monetized as credits, consistent accounting standards can aid decision-makers in the development of carbon emission mitigation strategies.

This study used a grounded theoretical framework for exploring the terms used in the policy documents of international accounting bodies regarding accounting standards and guidelines for carbon emission credits. Raw qualitative data were gathered, and an inductive approach was used by analyzing documents from various sources using the qualitative data text analysis software QDA Miner 6.

The findings showed that the financial statement reports of the corporations did not include disclosure of the carbon credit account. This omission was due to the lack of global standardization of carbon credit accounts and emission allowance recognition. This may hinder the production of a comprehensive report containing accurate and valuable financial information relevant to all stakeholders.

The study is among the first to use a grounded theoretical framework to investigate whether corporations are applying common standards and guidelines for carbon emissions accounting.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of carbon performance on carbon disclosure among nonfinancial French-listed firms, while also considering the corporate board’s characteristics as a secondary objective.

This study uses a sample of Société des Bourses Françaises 120 Index (SBF-120) French-listed firms to investigate the effect of multiple carbon performance proxies on carbon disclosure based on random effects models for the period 2010–2021. Generalized method of moments regressions are used to encounter endogeneity problems.

Drawing on stakeholder theory, this paper finds that greater carbon performance leads to greater carbon disclosure. Given the growing societal awareness about climate-change issues, carbon-responsible firms are likely to disseminate relevant carbon-related information through disclosures to respond to the information demands of a varied stakeholder group. Coherent with signaling theory, large firms that undertake carbon-reduction initiatives tend to disclose more information about their enhanced carbon performance to equity participants to distinguish themselves and highlight their decarbonization efforts.

This study offers significant insights given that SBF-120 firms are involved in climate-change activities as a response to the growing institutional and societal pressure to perform better and disclose reliable environmental information in their sustainability reports.

This study investigates the impact of the Paris Agreement (and other factors) on carbon information disclosures to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

A sample of South African listed companies was selected and data analysed from 2013 to 2017. A random effect panel data model using SPSS was used to determine whether the Paris Agreement had an effect on carbon information disclosure.

The results indicate that (1) the Paris Agreement, as an example of an intergovernmental coordination initiative, is significant in creating awareness and increasing the carbon disclosures to the CDP. Furthermore, (2) in terms of the other factors examined, providing incentives for managing climate change and assessing climate risks further into the future improves disclosure quality, while no relationship was found between the CDP score and the approval by key management personnel.

This research examines CDP disclosures for an emerging market before and after the signing of the Paris Agreement.

This research shows the importance of supportive government policy. Furthermore, a commitment to climate change disclosure is manageable and achievable and needs to be implemented at the management level.

In this study, the authors provide a systematic literature review of articles in the emerging areas of green finance and discuss the status and challenges in sustainability disclosure, which is crucial for the efficiency of green financial instruments. The authors then review the literature on the economic implications of green finance and outline future research directions.

The authors use the analytical framework – Search, Appraisal, Synthesis, and Analysis (SALSA) to conduct the systematic review of the literature.

Increasing public attention to the environment motivates the use of green finance to fund environmentally sustainable projects, and the rise of green finance intensifies the demand for environmental disclosure. Literature has documented tremendous growth in sustainability reporting over time and around the globe, as well as raised concerns about how such reporting lack consistency, comparability, and assurance. Despite these challenges, the authors find that in general, the literature agrees that a firm’s green practice is positively associated with its financial performance and negatively related to a firm’s cost of capital. Green finance is also found to bring about enhanced risk management and economic development.

The authors provide one of the first reviews of green finance, sustainability disclosure and the impact of green finance on financial performance, capital market and economic development.

This study aims to determine the influence of corporate governance characteristics on carbon emission disclosure in an emerging economy.

The study is based on S&P BSE 500 Indian firms for the period of 6 years from 2016–2017 to 2021–2022. The panel data regression models are used to gauge the association between corporate governance and carbon emission disclosure.

The empirical findings of the study support the positive and significant association between board activity intensity, environment committee and carbon emission disclosure. This evinced that the board activity intensity and presence of the environment committee have a critical role in carbon emission disclosure. On the contrary, findings reveal a significant and negative relationship between board size and carbon emission disclosure.

The present study provides treasured insights to regulators, policymakers, investors and corporate managers, as the study corroborates that various corporate governance characteristics exert significant influence on carbon emission disclosure.

The current research work provides novel insights into corporate governance and climate change literature that good corporate governance significantly boosts the carbon emission disclosure of firms. Previous studies examining the impact of corporate governance on carbon emission disclosure ignored emerging economies. Thus, the current work explores the role of governance mechanisms on carbon emission disclosure in an emerging context. Further, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the current study is the first of its kind to investigate the role of corporate governance on carbon emission disclosure in the Indian context.

This study aims to examine the reaction of stakeholders (i.e. capital providers) to climate-related corporate reporting. Climate-related corporate reporting is captured by the level of voluntary carbon disclosure, while the recognition and appreciation of capital providers are captured through the cost of equity capital (COE).

This study uses a sample including the 350 largest companies by market capitalization on the London Stock Exchange, UK (FTSE350) from 2015 to 2019. The authors use fixed-effects regression models to examine the effect of climate-related corporate reporting on the COE.

This study finds that voluntary carbon disclosure proxied by carbon disclosure score is negatively associated with COE. This suggests that firms’ superior quality disclosure of carbon information could contribute to a lower COE. This implies that the market and stakeholders positively appreciate the involvement in climate-related reporting by businesses.

The finding provides insights to regulators, investors and other stakeholders in terms of the positive economic implication of actively engaging in reducing climate change impact through voluntary carbon disclosure. These findings also motivate corporates to be proactively involved in climate-related reporting by extending the quality of carbon information disclosure.