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The contents of the annual reports of listed mining companies as well as of the Top 100 industrial companies in South Africa were analysed to determine how the disclosure of environmental information has changed over time. Disclosure of general environmental information increased until 1999 and then stabilised at that level. The initial increase in the disclosure of specific environmental information, such as measurable objectives and environmental performance, was followed by a decrease from 1998 onwards. A possible explanation could be that the lack of legal requirements with regard to the reporting of environmental information enables companies to decide what to report and what the extent of the reporting should be. They can therefore elect not to report specific and sometimes sensitive information, because stakeholders could perceive such information to be negative and it could therefore have a negative impact on the corporate image.

This research investigates whether firms that voluntarily publish environmental reports to supplement their annual financial statements disclose significantly more sustainability data than others. A matched-pair sample of companies, drawn from the EPA’s list of the 500 largest (volumetric basis) U.S. polluters, that published such environmental reports during 2001 or 2002 is used to assess the type and level of non-environmental social accounting disclosures in five different areas: employee safety/health, workforce and supplier diversity, product safety, community involvement, and energy usage. Fifty-two environmental report producers were matched with non-reporters based on total asset size and SIC. Content analysis was used to assess the substance of sample firm reporting. The results show highly significant differences in social accounting reporting, with the environmental report publishers disclosing more sustainability data in a wider range than their matched counterparts.

Previous research has highlighted a contradiction in regard to environmental reporting in South Africa. Managers, who can influence decisions regarding disclosure, express the view that more environmental reporting is needed, yet very little such reporting is done. A questionnaire was sent to every company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) with the request that the financial director should complete it. The questionnaire set out to establish whether managers are still as positive about environmental reporting as reported in previous research findings and, furthermore, to determine the reasons for the dearth of environmental reporting. Managers are still as positive as before about environmental reporting. The reasons for not reporting range from the contention that data is not available, that there are no legal requirements and that there is no demand for the data to the contention that it is not applicable to the particular industry and that costs exceed benefits. Most respondents do not regard the fear of liability to be a very important reason for non‐disclosure. The most important reason for non‐disclosure is that there is no legal requirement in respect of disclosure. This reason, together with the positive attitude of directors towards environmental reporting in general and towards reporting on a compulsory basis in particular, makes a strong case for the introduction of legislation in this regard. The introduction of legislation could be achieved by amending the Fourth Schedule of the Companies’ Act or the introduction by The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) of a statement of Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP) on environmental disclosure.

Based on the approach of the varieties of capitalism, this paper aims to investigate the influence of national governance characteristics on environmental disclosure.

This research analyzed companies based in coordinated economies, i.e. 1,815 companies from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden were investigated for the period 2009–2018. The authors created an index to measure environmental disclosure, and national governance was measured using the United Nations governance indicators.

The findings show that countries with greater transparency, democracy, citizen participation and government effectiveness tend to have companies with a greater environmental concern. The results allow us to conclude that the responsible behavior of companies is a mirror of the governance environment of the country where they operate. The findings have managerial implications.

Firms must be aware that institutional factors can influence their business. In institutional structures with low government effectiveness, little confidence in social rules and high levels of corruption, corporations tend to be less ethical.

This research used the varieties of capitalism approach to explain companies’ environmental disclosure. This is a recent approach to the institutional theory, and little explored in previous studies. Institutional level variables, such as governance indicators, can be used in other studies that analyze the relationship between institutional environment and corporate disclosure.

The study seeks to evaluate the extent and quality of environmental reporting following a longitudinal analysis and covering a wide spectrum of industries in a single frame. The study also attempts to identify the set of most favored environmental reporting items by firms and items which are least disclosed. Furthermore, the study attempts to test whether certain corporate attributes such as firm size, age of the firm, leverage ratio, profitability, presence of independent directors in the board and gender diversity have any influencing power over environmental disclosure practices. The whole study has been carried out from legitimacy theory setting.

The study follows longitudinal analysis to identify the extent and quality of environmental disclosures. A self-constructed checklist of 12 environmental reporting items has been developed analyzing the annual report and content analysis method is followed to measure the extent and quality of environmental disclosures and identify environmental reporting items which are mostly disclosed and which are least disclosed. The study further uses panel data regression analysis to investigate whether certain corporate attributes have any impact on environmental disclosures using multiple linear regression. Total of 345 annual reports of listed financial and nonfinancial institutions have been observed in this study ranging from 2015 to 2019.

The key finding suggests that strict enforcement of Green Banking Rules 2011 fosters country’s commercial banks to invest more to protect the environment and commercial banks encourage nonfinancial institutions for environmental performance and related disclosures through finance. Therefore, almost 50% of sample firms disclose their environmental performance through reporting in either narrative, quantitative or monetary format which was only 2.23% in the last decade. Findings also reveal that tree plantation is the most reported environment disclosure followed by investment in renewable energy and green infrastructural projects and the least reported items are fund allocation for climatic changes and carbon management policy. Further analysis shows that firm size and leverage ratio both have positive impact on environmental reporting.

An in-depth analysis may be conducted to identify why certain environmental items are least disclosed such as fund allotment for climatic changes, carbon management policy, etc. and how corporations may earn social appreciation and motivation by investing in those least preferred items in legitimacy theory setting. Future research may also take into consideration other corporate attributes which are not considered in the study.

The study conducted an in-depth analysis to understand the most favored form of environmental disclosures (narrative/quantitative/monetary) and their extent after incorporation of regulatory guidelines, which is the first of its kind in the research of environmental disclosures. The study indeed contributes to the documentation of environmental reporting in the context of a developing country where there is a lack of longitudinal analysis from the lens of legitimacy theory. Moreover, a wide spectrum of industries has been taken into consideration which facilitates the generalized findings on the environmental disclosure practices of corporations in Bangladesh.

本研究擬評估公司報告環境方面的程度和質量, 以及對就環境報告披露而言、最受青睞和最不受歡迎的項目加以處理。研究亦擬測試企業屬性對實踐環境信息披露的影響。

研究使用內容分析法、去測量環境信息披露的程度和質量。研究使用多元回歸分析、去探討企業屬性對環境信息披露的影響。研究涵蓋孟加拉國上市公司共345個年度報告, 涵蓋的年期為2015年至 2019年。

研究結果似乎顯示綠色金融規則 - 2011 、成功鼓勵機構為保護環境而投放更多資源; 機構最樂於匯報的項目為植樹, 而披露最少的則為氣候變化和碳管理政策。進一步的研究分析顯示, 公司的規模和杠杆比率均會對環境匯報帶來正面的影響。

本研究豐富了關於發展中國家環境匯報的官方文件記錄, 而在這類國家, 透過合法化理論而進行的縱貫性分析研究頗為缺乏。本研究以深度分析法、去瞭解環境信息披露方面最受青睞的信息披露方式 (故事形式的敘述/定量形式/金融形式), 也去瞭解納入強制的規管指引後環境信息披露的程度; 就此而言, 本研究為這類環境信息披露研究的首個研究。

To determine whether to entrust the European Union (EU) to create a new nonfinancial reporting framework or endorse the extant reporting framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), this study aims to explore whether the mandatory implementation of the EU Directive positively impacted the GRI-based environmental disclosure.

The authors compared the pre- and post-EU Directive environmental disclosure of 16 Italian environmentally sensitive companies. The authors used an extended coding scheme and developed a unique scoring system to compare the quantitative and qualitative changes in environmental disclosure.

The analysis showed that the quantity of environmental disclosure increased after the mandatory EU Directive adoption. The most significant change was observed regarding the disclosure topics explicitly required by the Italian legislature. Additionally, disclosure of soft information continued to prevail over that of hard information in the post-Directive period. While the Directive boosted the level of adherence to GRI standards, Italian companies disclosed information that could be easily mimicked (soft) instead of objective measures that could be verified (hard). In light of this evidence, the endorsement of extant GRI standards could be a valuable option for enhancing the comparability and transparency of environmental disclosure.

This study used an original extended coding system and proposed related environmental disclosure indexes that allow monitoring changes in environmental disclosure over time. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study is one of the few that justifies the significant impact of regulation (here the EU Directive) on the increase in environmental disclosure and that uses hard and soft information typology to examine the quality of environmental disclosure.

The objective of this chapter is to analyse the impact of France’s ‘Grenelle 2’ law of 2010, which applies to environmental accounting disclosures (EADs). More specifically, it seeks to observe whether the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ‘comply or explain’ model, transposed into the French regulatory framework, influences the disclosure strategies of firms that are listed on a regulated market.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of legitimacy and the concept of normativity, an empirical study is conducted on a sample of 96 French firms listed on the SBF index between 2009 and 2014. The effect of regulation is assessed by a content analysis of EAD in annual reports, examining changes in disclosure practices and the contents of disclosures.

The main results show that explanations for the absence of EAD showed a significant increase after the introduction of the law. We also observe that the new rules had no effect on the number of firms making EADs, although the quality of the disclosures declined. Finally, the results also concern practices of non-disclosure without any accompanying explanation.

The limitations of this study relate to the choices underlying the classifications and observations made during the content analysis.

This study has social relevance in that it supplies information for assessing the transposition of European directives into French law.

This study extends research concerning environmental disclosures by examining a recent accounting object. It also continues the debate on normativity, with its analysis of disclosures subject to a changing regulatory framework.

An understanding of disclosure themes used in annual reports can provide a foundation for improving communication of environmental information. The objective of this study is to provide insight into environmental disclosure themes that are used to provide management communication in the financial and non-financial sections of corporate annual reports. The study also explores the relationship between these disclosure themes and environmental performance. Findings from a sample of 53 U.S. companies in four major industry groups suggest that environmental disclosures in the financial section of annual reports contain information focused on expenditures and contingencies. Environmental disclosures in the non-financial section of the annual report mostly contain information about pollution abatement and various other environmental data. The highest perceived quality of disclosure is associated with environmental expenditures and contingencies. Other environmental information and pollution abatement disclosures appear to be of lower quality. These findings support previous studies showing that there is little relationship between environmental disclosures and environmental performance.

This paper examines factors that are associated with the level of a firm's environmental disclosure in the footnotes of its annual report financial statements and its 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The levels of environmental disclosure are measured using the Wiseman scale (Wiseman, 1982). An N-chotomous probit analysis is utilized where the level of disclosure is the dependent variable, and the independent variables are firm characteristics including: (1) institutional blockholder stock ownership, (2) amount of foreign concentration, (3) earnings volatility, (4) profitability, (5) leverage, (6) future need for debt financing, (7) firm size, and (8) industry membership.

The results indicate that higher foreign concentration, and to some extent, higher earnings volatility are associated with less environmental disclosure. These results provide evidence that firms with higher foreign concentration are more reluctant to disclose environmental information because they are under higher scrutiny from other countries and the international community. Additionally, it is probable that firms with a more volatile earnings process are less willing to disclose potential environmental costs and obligations because these additional expenditures can have an especially adverse effect during low-earnings periods.

An environmental accident at a Placer Dome mine triggered a contagion effect across the Canadian mining industry. The decline in equity prices was moderated by prior disclosure of a high-level commitment to environmental management. Investors appear to interpret this information as a signal of expertise in the management of environmental risks and costs. The same companies are positioned to make the most credible financial disclosures about environmental management, and yet the evidence suggests that financial disclosures themselves have a negative impact on company value. There may be a miscommunication between investors and analysts on the one hand and mining company executives on the other, which could explain why mining company managers report their companies’ shares are undervalued.