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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.

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.

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of carbon productivity on firms' financial performance. Secondly, the study also examines the moderating effect of industry types and firm size in the relationship between productivity and firm performance.

The data used for the study includes 66 listed Indian firms over the period from 2015–2016 to 2019–2020. The data used in the study are collected from the published corporate annual reports and sustainability reports. The study uses a random effect model based on the results of the Hausman test and the Breusch-Pagan test to investigate its objectives.

Carbon productivity has a favorable impact on firms' financial performance in India, indicating that firms may gain competitive advantages by minimizing carbon emissions and improving carbon productivity. Small and high carbon-intensive firms reap greater benefits from the improvement in carbon productivity compared to their opposite counterparts. However, such differential impact is only observed for the market-based measure but not for the accounting-based measure of financial performance.

The results suggest that high carbon-intensive firms should focus more on improving carbon productivity. Small firms and firms belonging to high carbon-intensive industries can improve their market performance by improving carbon productivity.

This study is a noble attempt to investigate the moderating effect of industry type and firm size while examining the impact of carbon productivity on firm performance in the context of an emerging economy.

In view of current climate change policies, this study aims to provide researchers, regulators, and business practice with the current picture of practices regarding carbon-related compensation granted to chief executive officers (CEO). To this end, it examines whether and to what extent European companies translate their carbon reduction strategies into carbon targets underlying their CEOs’ short-term and long-term compensation, what characteristics the carbon targets used commonly have in terms of their quality and time frame, and whether the carbon targets used differ among carbon-intensive, and less carbon-intensive companies.

Drawing on the stakeholder-agency theoretical perspective, this study explores the patterns of use and characteristics of carbon-related targets in CEO compensation. In this vein, a content analysis of corporate disclosure for the business years 2018 and 2019 is conducted for a European sample of 65 large listed companies from 16 countries and 11 industries.

The findings of this study show that albeit the trend toward new adoption, carbon-related CEO compensation systems are still uncommon. The results also reveal that carbon targets are mainly used to determine short-term compensation. Further, the findings highlight that carbon-related CEO compensation is almost equally widespread among carbon-intensive and less carbon-intensive companies. However, in terms of target quality, the study shows that carbon-intensive companies display greater heterogeneity and opacity.

By analyzing the characteristics of carbon targets and the prevalence of carbon-related CEO compensation for the first time, this study contributes to the stakeholder-agency theoretical perspective on corporate governance. In view of the European Green Deal and climate-related stakeholder demands, regulators and business practice are encouraged to recognize that carbon-related CEO compensation should gain momentum and the disclosure on this matter should become more transparent and comparable among companies and across industries.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether European companies issue standalone environmental reports in an attempt to gain and maintain legitimacy with relevant stakeholders. This is achieved by creating and empirically testing a model of the relationships between corporate reporting format, industry membership, environmental disclosure, and environmental performance.

Data are collected from 100 large European companies in carbon and non-carbon-intensive industries. Hypothesis testing is conducted via structure equation modeling.

Evidence exists that companies which disclose environmental information in standalone environmental reports tend to provide higher levels of environmental information than companies which combine financial and environmental disclosure in annual reports. The findings support greenwashing as a new perspective of legitimacy theory: companies in carbon-intensive industry use standalone environmental reports to pose as good corporate citizens even when they are not.

The sample companies are large European companies and this could limit the generalizability of research findings. The authors call for longitudinal studies examining how the relationship between reporting format and environmental disclosure changes.

This paper suggests that reporting format be considered a proactive, strategic communication-driven activity rather than a decision that managers passively make in response to external scrutiny.

The paper contributes to the literature by adding to the scarce evidence of the relationship between reporting format and environmental disclosure. Greenwashing as a new perspective of legitimacy theory is used to develop research hypotheses.

This paper aims to explore the nature of voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies among industry sectors over a period after the introduction of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Act 2007 and before the introduction of the Australian ETS.

A GHG disclosure index is used to evaluate the levels of GHG disclosure in 2009 and 2011 annual reports.

This paper highlights that non-GHG-registered companies seem to improve their disclosure by incorporating more “behavioural management” actions rather than “symbolic” actions. The changing rationale of GHG disclosure is towards more serious GHG reduction strategies. Consistent with voluntary disclosure and signalling theories, companies having good news to tell disclose their superior GHG information to promote their superior environmental performance.

The findings should be useful for stakeholders who are interested in GHG disclosure strategies. Also, the content analysis of the annual reports provides some clarity in respect of the most common aspects of GHG disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies which is helpful in the evaluation of correspondence between carbon disclosure strategies and the objectives of carbon abatement.

Previous studies mostly investigate the differences in the type of GHG disclosure among companies subject to mandatory GHG regulations. However, this paper is the first study to examine the changing rationale in the nature of GHG disclosure of non-GHG-registered companies. While much of the prior research uses GHG-registered companies as the sample, no empirical study to date has considered non-GHG-registered companies that encompass 96 per cent of ASX listed companies.

Climate change and carbon footprints are among the most urgent concerns facing society and are key issues of corporate responsibility. The purpose of this study is to assess whether Australian companies have adjusted their footprint‐related disclosure responses. Adopting a legitimacy perspective, a key aim is to assess whether pragmatic or moral legitimation approaches dominate by determining whether disclosure tends to be more reflective of symbolism or of apparent behaviour.

Content analysis of the sustainability and annual reports of the ASX's Top 50 companies is undertaken to compare carbon footprint‐related disclosures in 2008 and 2005. Their extent and nature (action or symbolism) and the use of attention‐attracting devices are reported for the more carbon intensive and less carbon intensive sectors.

Footprint‐related disclosure rates are increasing, and disclosure is being signalled more prominently. However, while carbon‐intensive sectors appear to be pursuing a moral legitimation strategy underpinned by substantive action, the less intensive sectors are relying more heavily on symbolic disclosure.

The sample size is small and comprises only large listed Australian companies.

While the carbon‐intensive sectors appear to be taking encouraging actions, a regulatory response may be required for the less carbon‐intensive sectors to take advantage of their market power to facilitate cooperative carbon reduction with broader constituent groups. Further, incentives for the carbon‐intensive sectors may be needed to encourage ongoing efforts to bridge the carbon chasm that is emerging.

This study appears to be the first to provide direct Australian evidence on favoured legitimation tactics by assessing the symbolic versus behavioural management implicit in carbon footprint‐related disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an input-output life cycle assessment model to estimate the carbon footprint of US manufacturing sectors. To achieve this, the paper sets out the following objectives: develop a time series carbon footprint estimation model for US manufacturing sectors; analyze the annual and cumulative carbon footprint; analyze and identify the most carbon emitting and carbon intensive manufacturing industries in the last four decades; and analyze the supply chains of US manufacturing industries to help identify the most critical carbon emitting industries.

Initially, the economic input-output tables of US economy and carbon footprint multipliers were collected from EORA database (Lenzen et al., 2012). Then, economic input-output life cycle assessment models were developed to quantify the carbon footprint extents of the US manufacturing sectors between 1970 and 2011. The carbon footprint is assessed in metric tons of CO₂-equivalent, whereas the economic outputs were measured in million dollar economic activity.

The salient finding of this paper is that the carbon footprint stock has been increasing substantially over the last four decades. The steep growth in economic output unfortunately over-shadowed the potential benefits that were obtained from lower CO₂ intensities. Analysis of specific industry results indicate that the top five manufacturing sectors based on total carbon footprint share are “petroleum refineries,” “Animal (except poultry) slaughtering, rendering, and processing,” “Other basic organic chemical manufacturing,” “Motor vehicle parts manufacturing,” and “Iron and steel mills and ferroalloy manufacturing.”

This paper proposes a state-of-art time series input-output-based carbon footprint assessment for the US manufacturing industries considering direct (onsite) and indirect (supply chain) impacts. In addition, the paper provides carbon intensity and carbon stock variables that are assessed over time for each of the US manufacturing industries from a supply chain footprint perspective.

This study aims to quantify sectoral energy and carbon intensity, revisit the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and explore the relationship between economic diversification and CO₂ emissions in Bahrain.

Three stages were followed to understand the linkages between sectoral economic growth, energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in Bahrain. Sectoral energy and carbon intensity were calculated, time series data trends were analyzed and two econometric models were built and analyzed using the autoregressive distributed lag method and time series data for the period 1980–2019.

The results of the analysis suggest that energy and carbon intensity in Bahrain’s industrial sector is higher than those of its services and agricultural sectors. The EKC was found to be invalid for Bahrain, where economic growth is still coupled with CO₂ emissions. Whereas CO₂ emissions have increased with growth in the manufacturing, and real estate subsectors, the emissions have decreased with growth in the hospitability, transportation and communications subsectors. These results indicate that economic diversification, specifically of the services sector, is aligned with Bahrain’s carbon neutrality target. However, less energy-intensive industries, such as recycling-based industries, are needed to counter the environmental impacts of economic growth.

The impacts of economic diversification on energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in the Gulf Cooperation Council petroleum countries have rarely been explored. Findings from this study contribute to informing economic and environment-related policymaking in Bahrain.

Carbon reduction in the construction industry is related to the achievement of carbon emission peaks and carbon neutrality targets. Therefore, exploring the influence of current carbon reduction policies on the construction industry is necessary. China’s low-carbon pilot (LCP) policy has been extensively studied, while LCPs mechanism and effectiveness on carbon reduction in the construction industry remain to be explored.

This study selected four provincial LCP regions as case studies and adopted the grounded theory method for case studies to analyze the implementation mechanism of the LCP policy on carbon reduction in the construction industry. Then, this study adopted the propensity score matching and difference-in-differences regression (PSM-DID) approach to evaluate the influence of the LCP policy on carbon intensity (CI) in the construction industry by using panel data taken from 30 provinces in China between 2008 and 2017.

The authors found that (1) the LCP policy promotes carbon reduction in the construction industry through the crossing implementation mechanism of five vertical support approaches and five horizontal support approaches. (2). The LCP policy can significantly reduce CI in the construction industry.

The study not only explored how is the LCP policy implemented, but also examined the effectiveness of the LCP policy in the construction industry. The policy implications of this study can help policy-makers better achieve low-carbon development targets in the construction industry.