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Is the natural environment a stakeholder of the firm? And is there a business case for achieving sustainability? The purpose of this paper is to trace a tripartite relationship, involving environmental disclosure, environmental performance, and financial performance of environmentally sensitive activities of companies in a European setting.

A sample of 60 of the largest European Union industrial business groups, extracted from the FTSEuroFirst 300, and an environmental disclosure index inspired by the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines, form the basis for the content analysis of the most recent sustainability reports published before the end of 2008.

A significant association is found between contemporaneous environmental performance and disclosure, in that bigger polluters tend to disclose more on their activities, but only to a moderate statistical effect. However, no association is found between environmental performance and financial performance, as well as between environmental disclosure and contemporaneous firm performance.

This result suggests that even though big polluters tend to report more, the transparency level of their activities may not be sufficient for a viable assessment of sustainability. For such “environmentally challenged” companies, their reputation‐building strategy is mainly focused on preserving or repairing legitimacy.

The paper considers two complementary aspects: first, that the relationship between sustainability commitment and financial performance may be so weak that it is barely detectable; and second, that cross‐sectional studies may fail in capturing a relationship that is normally shaped over longer periods of time.

The objectives of this paper are to examine the level of environmental disclosure in annual reports made by Malaysian public listed companies for the year ended 2009, and to investigate whether there are any relationships between board characteristics (board size and board independence), firm characteristics (business type) and human capital characteristics (age, knowledge background and proportion of female directors) and environmental disclosure in Malaysian public listed companies' annual reports for the year ended 2009.

The study constructs the environmental disclosure index with 11 disclosure themes based on research by Sharifah et al. to determine the environmental disclosure level. The study uses content analysis to find the environmental disclosure items and constructs an environmental disclosure index from the companies' annual reports. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to examine the relationships between the environmental disclosure index and board characteristics (board size and board independence), firm characteristics (business type) and human capital characteristics (age, knowledge background and proportion of female directors).

The results of the study reveal that there is a significant relationship between the existence of an independent non-executive chairman, the chairperson's age, the existence of a CEO with a law background and the industry type with the extent of environmental disclosure. The industry type is found to be the most significant variable that influences the level of environmental disclosure in Malaysian public listed companies for the year ended 2009.

The findings are limited to Malaysian public listed companies for the year January to December 2009. The source of the data used in this study is companies' annual reports only. This study has several implications that may apply in many countries, irrespective of whether they are developing or developed countries. First, it provides strong evidence to show that boards of directors and human capital are significant variables in the extent of disclosure. Second, it is useful to managers, especially to boards of directors in Malaysia, in identifying board characteristics and human capital characteristics that could improve companies' environmental activities; these could be disclosed in the interest of stakeholders and the public's environmental concern. Third, this study can also be used as an initial step for companies in to be involved in environmental activities. Prior studies have proved that these activities could enhance companies' image and reputation and could offer financial benefits to the business.

The study extends the previous studies by the inclusion of human capital characteristics as a factor that influences environmental reporting in Malaysia. This study has demonstrated that to mitigate the agency problems between firms and shareholders, society and stakeholders, and particularly environmental impact, the inclusion of human capital characteristics as an indicator may help to reduce expected costs and negative impacts on firm value, and may also demonstrate to society and the company's stakeholders that individual firms are doing their part to help solve society's social and environmental problems through additional disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to construct the social and environmental disclosure index for Indian companies in order to examine the relationship between social and environmental disclosure and select corporate attributes.

The sample covers annual reports of companies for financial year 2011-2012. The sample represents both financial and non-financial companies that constitute Nifty 50 Index companies as on March 31, 2012. The actual size of the sample analyzed represented 41 companies. The unweighted disclosure index approach has been used to measure the extent of disclosure of social and environmental information where an item scores 1 if disclosed and 0 if not disclosed. The authors built a model using regression which indicates the variables that are significant in determining the social and environmental disclosure of a company. The regression model can be used to predict the degree of disclosure of a company given the values of explanatory variables. Content analysis from annual reports of the companies has been used in constructing the dependent variable.

Regression results indicate that location (place where the registered office of company is located), number of operations of company, turnover, sales and administration expenses, age of company, employee cost and interest paid by company are significant in determining the disclosure index of the company.

Sample size can be increased by considering more companies. In addition, a longitudinal study would enable in drawing comparison over a period of time with respect to disclosure index. The increased sample size would help in validating the disclosure score by dividing the data set into two: one as observation window and the other as validation window.The model explains 23 percent variation in disclosure index. More variation may be explained by incorporating more explanatory variables in the model.

The authors indicate the level of disclosure in case of Indian companies which may prove to be an indicator for prospective investors especially in the present era of global financial and economic downturn. The paper may assist the regulators in framing policies regarding corporate governance. This will enable the regulators of corporate sector to frame laws in order to predict the degree of disclosure of a company based on certain explanatory variables.

The authors focus especially on Indian companies for constructing the disclosure index which to the best of knowledge has not been attempted till date.

This paper seeks to empirically examine the influence of the new Portuguese environmental accounting standard on the environmental information disclosed in the annual reports by a sample of large firms operating in Portugal during the period 2002‐2004.

The method used is the content analysis technique by developing an index (which consists of the 16 environmentally‐related disclosure items) in order to assess the presence of the environmental disclosures and their breadth (number of items disclosed).

The results indicate that, in spite of the fact that the level of environmental information disclosed during the period 2002‐2004 is low, the extent of environmental disclosure has increased, as well as the number of Portuguese companies that disclose environmental information. The change in environmental disclosure behaviour between 2002 and 2004 is certainly consistent with the idea that the new accounting standard is starting to have an impact.

The study adds to the international research on environmental disclosure by providing empirical data from a country, Portugal, where empirical evidence is still relatively limited. Moreover, the study provides empirical support for the contentions of other authors that mandatory reporting guidelines affect corporate reporting practices.

This study aims to explore the moderating role of corporate governance index between environmental disclosure and idiosyncratic risk.

Governance index constructed on the basis of principle component analysis (PCA) that comprised Board Duality (BD), Board Size (BS), Board Independent (BI) and Board Meeting (BM). Collected panel data of 103 nonfinancial companies listed in stock exchanges of Pakistan and India for the period 2013–2020. To address the issue of endogeneity, this study used generalized methods of moments (GMM).

This study revealed that corporate governance index negatively modifies the relationship between environmental disclosure and idiosyncratic risk for both Pakistan and India scenario. Findings of the study also disclosed environmental disclosure has positive significant impact on idiosyncratic risk in case of Pakistan, whereas it has a negative significant impact in case of India.

The major limitation of the study is availability of environmental disclosure data, future researchers may extend time period and add other emerging economies for analysis. Moreover, assumption of objectivity in the evaluation of environmental disclosure is another limitation of the study. Future research should examine the standard of environmental actions that businesses declare. This study used CAPM model to measure idiosyncratic risk, and future studies suggest measure idiosyncratic risk by using Fama & French four and five factors model for better results and robustness.

Study provides guidelines to investors for choosing stock for investment and also helpful for management to minimize agency problems through better governance mechanisms. Furthermore, study has deep implications for CEOs, portfolio managers, researchers and academics.

The study intended to empirically examine the moderation of Corporate Governance Index between the relationship of Environmental Disclosure and Idiosyncratic Risk.

The objective of the present study is to examine the extent, quality, nature and trends of environmental disclosures of Malaysian property development companies for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006.

A content analysis was undertaken of the annual reports of a sample of public listed property development companies in Malaysia for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. The content analysis examined extent, nature and quality of disclosures, utilising number of sentences for extent and the Clarkson et al. disclosure index for nature and quality.

Malaysian property development companies do not appear to respond to the increased public concern due to recent landslide incidents by increasing the extent or quality of environmental disclosures in their annual reports. Both extent and quality of environmental disclosures are very low and most companies provide mostly “soft” disclosures. They also make very few “hard” disclosures, comprising objective, verifiable data. Thus, the Malaysian Government needs to seriously consider making environmental reporting mandatory and to provide more detailed and comprehensive environmental reporting guidelines. Another major finding is that companies are not consistent in the extent, nature or quality of environmental disclosures made over time.

The paper provides empirical evidence of the extent, quality and nature of environmental disclosures in an environmentally‐sensitive sector. It is the first study in a developing country to utilise the Clarkson et al. index, which was developed based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines.

An increasing number of business organizations around the world are engaged in the accounting reporting on non-financial performance aspects, mainly within the field of environmental responsibility. The purpose of this paper is to assess the association between environmental disclosure and environmental performance and examine the financial attributes of companies using a composite disclosure index to investigate the status of the environmental disclosure practices of the top 40 companies operating in France.

The sample used in this study consists of the 40 largest companies operating in France (index CAC 40).

The findings of the study show that environmental disclosure is positively associated to environmental performance. Financial attributes, such as firm size, the need for capital, profitability and capital spending, are positively associated with environmental disclosure quality. Equally, a high quality of environmental disclosure will reflect the effectiveness of corporate governance and would tend to face fewer difficulties in accessing capital markets. The authors found that firms revealed on healthcare and gas oil business sector disclose more environmental information than other industries.

A web-based search was performed during the fourth quarter of 2014, locating the corporate websites of the sample firms. The sample period is 2011-2013 (108 firm-year observations).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of environmental performance on the environmental disclosure level.

Carbon disclosure leadership index score is considered as a proxy of carbon disclosure level, while greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a proxy of environmental performance. In addition, six control variables are used: return on assets, financial leverage, company’s size, CEO duality, board size and percentage of independent directors on board. The sample comprises 102 companies from a population of Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) companies over a five-year period, 2009-2013.

Results revealed that higher pollution levels in terms of GHG emissions affect negatively the dissemination of carbon disclosure information, suggesting a positive relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure level. In addition, companies with good environmental performance in relation to their average environmental performance disseminate more carbon information in their disclosures. Thus, the carbon disclosure level is indicative of environmental performance consistent with the voluntary disclosure theory.

The managerial behavior regarding the relation of environmental disclosure and environmental performance is explained. In addition, the findings should be of use to those investors interested in finding carbon emission information so that they assess investments and evaluate their current portfolios in terms of environmental sustainability.

It is intended to ascertain the reliability level of carbon disclosure regarding carbon emission information by incorporating the carbon disclosure leadership index score and GHG emissions.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the environmental disclosure practices of firms engaged in environmentally sensitive industries by examining their association with environmental performance.

The study tests for associations between environmental performance and the level and nature of environmental disclosures by listed Chinese firms operating in industries that have been identified by a regulator as environmentally sensitive. The level of environmental disclosure is measured using a disclosure index based on the global reporting initiative. The nature of environmental disclosure is measured as the ratio of hard to total disclosure items.

Firms with more favourable environmental performance provide a higher level of environmental disclosure and include a greater proportion of hard disclosure items. However, the overall level of disclosure is lower than that observed in developed countries.

Due to data constraints, the proxy for environmental performance is based on the receipt and maintenance of environmental titles and awards and does not capture variation in the level of environmental performance of firms with no titles or awards.

As China continues to embrace market-based economic reform, the ability to reflect sustainable choices through market transactions is of increasing importance to the preservation of economic, natural and social capital for future generations.

The study examines the relation between environmental reporting and environmental performance by firms operating in industries that have been identified by a regulator as environmentally sensitive.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between corporate social responsiveness and organizational characteristics. Using a ratio comparing the number of environmental disclosures that are made internally by the firm with external environmental disclosures (Environmental Disclosure Index), an empirical analysis was done using data from 24 chemical companies. The study's results showed that there was an inverse relationship between the firm's social responsiveness and the firm's size and a positive relationship with the firm's financial performance. The study's results did not indicate a significant relationship between the level of corporate social responsiveness and the capital expenditures and pollution emissions released by the firms.