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The research analyzes the influence of three environmental triggers, i.e. awareness, concern and knowledge on environmental attachment and green motivation that affect tourists' pro-environmental behavior in the Pakistan’s tourism industry. Furthermore, this study has analyzed the moderating role of moral obligation concerning environmental attachment and green motivation on tourists' pro-environmental behavior.

Data were gathered via a structured questionnaire by 237 local (domestic) tourists of Pakistan. Furthermore, the data were examined by employing SmartPLS.

Findings demonstrate that all three environmental triggers have a positive and significant relationship with environmental attachment and green motivation. Accordingly, environmental attachment and green motivation promote tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Furthermore, the moderating role of moral obligations has also been incorporated in the study. The finding reveals a strong and positive relationship among environmental attachment and tourists' pro-environmental behaviors during high moral obligations. In contrast, moral obligations do not moderate association between green motivation and tourists' pro-environmental behavior. Therefore, competent authorities should facilitate tourists to adopt environmentally friendly practices; which will ultimately promote pro-environmental behavior.

This study provides useful insights regarding the role of tourism in fostering environmental attachment and green motivation that sequentially influence tourist pro-environmental behavior. Secondly, this research has employed moral obligations as a moderator to identify the changes in tourists’ pro-environmental behavior based on individuals' ethical considerations. Hence, the study provides an in-depth insight into tourists' behavior. Lastly, the present research offers effective strategies for the tourism sector and other competent authorities to increase green activities that can embed the importance of the environment among individuals.

(1) A concern often expressed in relation to cryptocurrencies is the environmental impact associated with increasing energy consumption and mining pollution. Controversy remains regarding how environmental attention and public concerns adversely affect cryptocurrency prices. Therefore, the paper aims to introduce the index of cryptocurrency environmental attention (ICEA), which aims to capture the relative extent of media discussions surrounding the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies. (2) The impacts of cryptocurrency environmental attention on long-term macro-financial markets and economic development remain part of undeveloped research fields. Based on these factors, the paper will further examine the effects of the ICEA on financial markets or economic developments.

(1) The paper introduces a new index to capture cryptocurrency environmental attention in terms of the cryptocurrency response to major related events through gathering a large amount of news stories around cryptocurrency environmental concerns – i.e. >778.2 million news items from the LexisNexis News & Business database, which can be considered as Big Data – and analysing that rich dataset using variety of quantitative techniques. (2) The vector error correction model (VECM) and structural VECM (SVECM) [impulse response function (IRF), forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD) and historical decomposition (HD)] are useful for characterising the dynamic relationships between ICEA and aggregate economic activities.

(1) The paper has developed a new measure of attention to sustainability concerns of cryptocurrency markets' growth, ICEA. (2) ICEA has a significantly positive relationship with the UCRY indices, volatility index (VIX), Brent crude oil (BCO) and Bitcoin. (3) ICEA has a significantly negative relationship with the global economic policy uncertainty (GlobalEPU) and global temperature uncertainty (GTU). Moreover, ICEA has a significantly positive relationship with the industrial production (IP) in the short term, whilst having a significantly negative relationship in the long term. (4) The HD of the ICEA displays higher linkages between environmental attention, Bitcoin and UCRY indices around key events that significantly change the prices of digital assets.

The ICEA is significant in the analysis of whether cryptocurrency markets are sustainable regarding energy consumption requirements and negative contributions to climate change. Understanding of the broader impacts of cryptocurrency environmental concerns on cryptocurrency market volatility, uncertainty and environmental sustainability should be considered and developed. Moreover, the paper aims to point out future research and policy legislation directions. Notably, the paper poses the question of how cryptocurrency can be made more sustainable and environmentally friendly and how governments' cryptocurrency policies can address the cryptocurrency markets.

(1) The paper develops a cryptocurrency environmental attention index based on news coverage that captures the extent to which environmental sustainability concerns are discussed in conjunction with cryptocurrencies. (2) The paper empirically investigates the impacts of cryptocurrency environmental attention on other financial or economic variables [cryptocurrency uncertainty (UCRY) indices, Bitcoin, VIX, GlobalEPU, BCO, GTU index and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development IP index]. (3) The paper provides insights into making the most effective use of online databases in the development of new indices for financial research.

Whilst blockchain technology has a number of useful implications and has great potential to transform several industries, issues of high-energy consumption and CO2 pollution regarding cryptocurrency have become some of the main areas of criticism, raising questions about the sustainability of cryptocurrencies. These results are essential for both policy-makers and for academics, since the results highlight an urgent need for research addressing the key issues, such as the growth of carbon produced in the creation of this new digital currency. The results also are important for investors concerned with the ethical implications and environmental impacts of their investment choices.

(1) The paper provides an efficient new proxy for cryptocurrency and robust empirical evidence for future research concerning the impact of environmental issues on cryptocurrency markets. (2) The study successfully links cryptocurrency environmental attention to the financial markets, economic developments and other volatility and uncertainty measures, which has certain novel implications for the cryptocurrency literature. (3) The empirical findings of the paper offer useful and up-to-date insights for investors, guiding policy-makers, regulators and media, enabling the ICEA to evolve into a barometer in the cryptocurrency era and play a role in, for example, environmental policy development and investment portfolio optimisation.

The study examines the social and environmental responsibility indicators disclosed by three International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) corporate mining members in their social and environmental reporting (SER) from 2006 to 2014. To achieve this aim, the author limits the data two years before (i.e. from 2006 to 2007) and six years after (i.e. from 2009 to 2014) the implementation of the Sustainable Development Framework in the mining sector in 2008.

Using the techniques of content analysis and interpretive textual analysis, this study examines 27 social and environmental responsibility reports published between 2006 and 2014 by three ICMM corporate mining members. The study develops a disclosure index based on the earlier work of Hackston and Milne (1996), together with other disclosure items suggested in the extant literature and considered appropriate for this work. The disclosure index for this study comprised six disclosure categories (“employee”, “environment”, “community involvement”, “energy”, “governance” and “general”). In each of the six disclosure categories, only 10 disclosure items were chosen and that results in 60 disclosure items.

A total of 830 out of a maximum of 1,620 social and environmental responsibility indicators, representing 51% (168 employees, 151 environmental, 145 community involvement, 128 energy, 127 governance and 111 general) were identified and examined in company SER. The study showed that the sample companies relied on multiple strategies for managing pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy via disclosures. Such practices raise questions regarding company-specific disclosure policies and their possible links to the quality/quantity of their disclosures. The findings suggest that managers of mining companies may opt for “cherry-picking” and/or capitalise on events for reporting purposes as well as refocus on company-specific issues of priority in their disclosures. While such practices may appear appropriate and/or timely to meet stakeholders’ needs and interests, they may work against the development of comprehensive reports due to the multiple strategies adopted to manage pragmatic and moral legitimacy.

A limitation of this research is that the author relied on self-reported corporate disclosures, as opposed to verifying the activities associated with the claims by the sample mining companies.

The findings from this research will help future social and environmental accounting researchers to operationalise Suchman’s typology of legitimacy in other contexts.

With growing large-scale mining activity, potential social and environmental footprints are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Powerful and legitimacy-conferring stakeholders are likely to disapprove such mining activity and reconsider their support, which may threaten the survival of the mining company and also create a legitimacy threat for the whole mining industry.

This study innovates by focusing on Suchman’s (1995) typology of legitimacy framework to interpret SER in an industry characterised by potential social and environmental footprints – the mining industry.

The study aims to build upon the Resource-based view of the firm (RBV) and Dynamic Capability Theory (DCT) to perform a meta-analysis on the eco-innovation/SMEs’ sustainable performance relationship.

Employing a psychometric meta-analytic approach with a random-effects model, the study examines a sample of 134,841 SMEs covering 99 studies and 233 study effects. Subgroup and meta-regression analysis were used to test the study`s hypotheses in Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) statistical software.

Results unveil that the average impact of eco-innovation on SMEs` sustainable performance is positively significant but moderate. Moreover, it was found that eco-process, eco-product, eco-organizational, and eco-marketing innovations positively influence SMEs’ sustainable performance, but the impact of eco-organizational innovation is the strongest. Findings further reveal that eco-innovation positively influences economic, social, and environmental performance, but its effect on social performance is the largest. Moreover, our findings reveal that contextual factors, including industry type, culture, industry intensity, global sustainable competitive index, and human development index, moderate the eco-innovation/SMEs’ sustainable performance relationship. Lastly, methodological factors, namely sampling technique, study type, and publication status, account for study-study variance.

Our findings imply that investing in eco-innovation is worthwhile for SMEs. Therefore, CEOs/managers of SMEs must adopt eco-innovation initiatives by establishing a sustainability vision, developing employee environmental development and training, building a stakeholder management system, and promoting employee engagement in sustainability activities.

The study develops a holistic conceptual framework to consolidate the distinct types of eco-innovation and their association with the sustainable performance of SMEs for the first time in this research stream, thereby resolving the anecdotal results and synthesizing the fragmented literature across culture, discipline, and contexts.

This study aims to examine the various climate change practices adopted by firms and develop a set of corporate indexes that measure the level of climate change corporate commitment, climate change risk management integration and climate change strategies adoption. Moreover, this study examines the relationship between the aforementioned indexes. The authors claim that there is a positive relationship between the adoption of climate change strategies, corporate commitment and risk management integration. The aforementioned indexes have been used to assess the largest companies in the oil and gas sectors.

To assess this study’s sample companies, a content analysis of their carbon disclosure project (CDP) reports for the years 2012-2015 was conducted. Finally, weights were assigned to the content analysis data based on the results of a survey regarding the difficulty of implementing each climate change practice included in the respective index. The survey sample included climate change experts who are either currently employed in companies that are included in the Financial Times Global 500 (FT 500) list, or work as external partners with these companies.

The present study results highlight the need for developing elaborate corporate indexes, as the various climate change practices have different degrees of difficulty regarding their implementation. Additionally, a general trend in adopting climate change strategies is observed, especially in the field of carbon reduction strategies, which mainly involve the implementation of low carbon technologies. Finally, a positive and significant relationship was found between carbon reduction targets, risk management integration and climate change strategies.

Although international research has extensively examined the importance of managers’ perceptions on environmental issues as an enabling factor in developing environmental strategies, according to the results of our survey, corporations must go beyond top management commitment towards climate change to be able to successfully implement climate change strategies. Incorporation of climate change risk management procedures into a company’s core business activities as well as the establishment of precise carbon reduction targets can provide the basis on which successful climate change strategies are implemented.

Most studies address the issue of climate change management in terms of environmental or sustainability management. Furthermore, research on climate change and its relationship with business management is mainly theoretical, and climate change corporate performance is measured with aggregate indexes. This study focuses on climate change which is examined from a five-dimensional perspective: top management commitment, carbon reduction targets, risk management integration, carbon reduction and carbon compensation strategies. This allows us to conduct an in-depth analysis of the various climate change practices of firms.

This paper aims to verify whether the integration of sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance and whether corporate governance characteristics enhance the relationship between sustainability compensation and firms’ non-financial performance and to expand the domain of the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is based on a sample of companies listed on the Milan Italian Stock Exchange from the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index over the 2016–2020 period. Regression analysis was used by using data retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database and the sample firms’ remuneration reports.

The findings of this paper show that embedding sustainability in executive compensation positively affects firms’ non-financial performance. The results of this paper also reveal that specific corporate governance features can improve the impact of sustainability on non-financial performance.

This analysis is limited to Italian firms included in the Financial Times Milan Stock Exchange Index; however, the findings are highly significant.

The findings provide regulators with useful insights for considering the integration of sustainability goals into executive remuneration. Another implication is that policymakers should require – at least – listed firms to fulfil specific corporate governance structural requirements. Finally, the findings can provide investors and financial analysts with a greater awareness of the role played by executive remuneration in the long-term value-creation process.

This paper contributes to addressing the relationship among sustainability, remuneration and non-financial disclosure, drawing on the stakeholder–agency theoretical framework and focusing on Italian firms. This issue has received limited attention with controversial results in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate current practices of water governance disclosure in the food, beverage and tobacco industry and to determine whether the quality of disclosure has a positive association with integrated reporting (IR).

A water governance disclosure index was developed that used content analysis to code the latest standalone social, environmental and sustainability reports or integrated reports of 49 companies in the food, beverage and tobacco industry. The selected companies are listed on three indices, the ASX, JSE and DJSI. This was followed by quantitatively testing the association between IR and the quality of water governance disclosure, as measured against the qualitatively developed index.

It was found that the 18 IR companies’ water governance disclosure quality significantly outperformed the 31 companies in the non-IR group, with a calculated index score of 71.67% and 40.97%, respectively.

The evidence indicates that IR is superior to non-IR water governance disclosure, and the study, therefore, contributes to the literature around the legitimacy theory by concluding that IR is supportive to companies to legitimise their being.

The originality of this paper stems from the comparison of water governance disclosures between IR and non-IR firms. Considering that IR preparers outperformed companies in the non-IR group could provide insights to academics, regulators and reporting organisations that IR could be used to enhance water governance disclosure.

The aim of this article is to research on forestry green total factor productivity and explore the impact of financial support on forestry green total factor productivity.

The methods used in this study are super efficiency SBM model of undesired output and empirical model. SBM model is a kind of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The SBM model with non-expected outputs (slacks-based measure) can be used to deal with the problem of efficiency measurement with multiple input and output variables and can be used to analyze the efficiency of green development of forestry economy.

First, the overall green total factor productivity of the authors’ country's forestry has shown a trend of first decline and then an increase from 2008 to 2018, and there are significant spatiotemporal differences; second, financial support has a significant positive impact on forestry green total factor productivity; third, environmental regulation has a significant threshold effect in the process of financial support on forestry green total factor productivity, and the role of financial support shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing.

Secondly, taking the data of 30 provinces and cities in the authors’ country from 2008 to 2018 as the research object, using the super-efficiency SBM-Malmquist index to measure the country's forestry green total factor productivity and analyze its temporal and spatial changes; finally, a dynamic panel model was established to explore the impact of financial support on forestry green total factors quantitative impact on productivity, and adding environmental regulation as a threshold variable to establish a dynamic threshold regression, and found that financial support has a nonlinear impact on forestry green total factor productivity.

To construct a scientific and reasonable indicator system, it is necessary to design a set of standardized indicator primary selection and optimization inspection process. The purpose of this paper is to provide theoretical guidance and reference standards for the indicator system design process, laying a solid foundation for the application of the indicator system, by systematically exploring the expert evaluation method to optimize the index system to enhance its credibility and reliability, to improve its resolution and accuracy and reduce its objectivity and randomness.

The paper is based on system theory and statistics, and it designs the main line of “relevant theoretical analysis – identification of indicators – expert assignment and quality inspection” to achieve the design and optimization of the indicator system. First, the theoretical basis analysis, relevant factor analysis and physical process description are used to clarify the comprehensive evaluation problem and the correlation mechanism. Second, the system structure analysis, hierarchical decomposition and indicator set identification are used to complete the initial establishment of the indicator system. Third, based on expert assignment method, such as Delphi assignments, statistical analysis, t-test and non-parametric test are used to complete the expert assignment quality diagnosis of a single index, the reliability and validity test is used to perform single-index assignment correction and consistency test is used for KENDALL coordination coefficient and F-test multi-indicator expert assignment quality diagnosis.

Compared with the traditional index system construction method, the optimization process used in the study standardizes the process of index establishment, reduces subjectivity and randomness, and enhances objectivity and scientificity.

The innovation point and value of the paper are embodied in three aspects. First, the system design process of the combined indicator system, the multi-dimensional index screening and system optimization are carried out to ensure that the index system is scientific, reasonable and comprehensive. Second, the experts’ background is comprehensively evaluated. The objectivity and reliability of experts’ assignment are analyzed and improved on the basis of traditional methods. Third, aim at the quality of expert assignment, conduct t-test, non-parametric test of single index, and multi-optimal test of coordination and importance of multiple indicators, enhance experts the practicality of assignment and ensures the quality of expert assignment.

Environmental degradation resulting from human activities may adversely affect human health in multiple ways. Until now, policies aimed at mitigating environmental problems such as climate change, environmental pollution and damage to biodiversity have failed to clearly identify and drive the potential benefits of these policies on health. The conducted study assesses and demonstrates how specific environmental policies and instruments influence perceived human health in order to ensure input for a data-driven decision process.

The study was conducted for the 2004–2020 period in European Union (EU) countries with the use of dynamic panel data modeling. Verification of specific policies' impact on dependent variables allows to indicate this their effectiveness and importance. As a result of the computed dynamic panel data models, it has been confirmed that a number of significant and meaningful relationships between the self-perceived health index and environmental variables can be identified.

There is a strong positive impact of environmental taxation on the health index, and the strength of this relationship causes effects to be observed in the very short term, even the following year. In addition, the development of renewable energy sources (RES) and the elimination of fossil fuels from the energy mix exert positive, although milder, effects on health. The reduction of ammonia emissions from agriculture and reducing noise pollution are other health-supporting factors that have been shown to be statistically valid. Results allow to identify the most efficient policies in the analyzed area in order to introduce those with the best results or a mix of such measures.

The results of the authors' research clearly indicate the health benefits of measures primarily aimed at improving environmental factors, such as environmental taxes in general. The authors have also discovered an unexpected negative impact of an increase in the share of energy taxes in total taxes on the health index. The presented study opens several possibilities for further investigation, especially in the context of the rapidly changing geopolitical environment and global efforts to respond to environmental and health challenges. The authors believe that the outcome of the authors' study may provide new arguments to policymakers pursuing solutions that are not always easily acceptable by the public.