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The purpose of this study is to examine the status of corporate environment on the websites and annual reports of selected companies. This paper also attempts to study the relationship between company variables and the level of corporate environment disclosure on the company website and annual reports.

This study is based on the websites and annual reports of top 100 listed companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The companies are selected on the basis of market capitalization as on March 31, 2014. The data are collected on the basis of Global Reporting Initiative-3 Guidelines.

14 and 30 per cent of the companies do not disclose environmental information on the website and annual report, respectively. There is no specific space for the disclosure of information on this vital issue; information was found scattered in the various sections of the website and annual report. Waste treatment, water management and carbon foot is the focus area of 53, 46 and 40 companies on the website, respectively, whereas in annual reports, energy conservation, water management and waste management attracts the attention of 79, 86 and 82 companies, respectively. The environmental disclosure on the website and overall disclosure has association with leverage, company size and systematic risk. Profitability and environmental disclosure were found to be inversely associated.

The government through appropriate guidelines should make the environmental disclosure mandatory for all the companies. Disclosure of environmental information such as penalties imposed and suits faced under environmental laws and notices received from pollution control boards and such other activities which have damaged environmental resources must be made mandatory. The accounting bodies should develop the accounting standard in respect of items and manner of disclosure. While framing environmental disclosure guidelines, special attention should be given to the disclosure of information related to water management, air and land pollution as these are the basic necessities for the existence of life on this planet.

This study is unique as it makes the comparative analysis of disclosure through annual reports and the company website of selected Indian companies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether investor views regarding the benefits of corporate environmental responsibility moderate the influence of environmental performance and assurance information on their judgments. Specifically, the authors examine the effects of two broad views: environmental responsibility is more important than financial performance, regardless of investment returns (i.e. environmental responsibility importance) and positive environmental performance will increase investment returns (i.e. environmental performance return).

Nonprofessional investors completed an online study where environmental performance (high or low) and assurance on environmental performance information (present or absent) were varied. Participants’ corporate environmental responsibility views were assessed using a series of questions adapted from Cheah et al.’s (2011) study.

Environmental performance and assurance information had a greater influence on the investment judgments of investors with strong environmental responsibility views. In contrast, participants’ environmental performance return views did not moderate the influence of environmental performance and assurance information on their judgments. Supplemental analysis indicates that these contrasting results are due to the fact that the two investor views have differing influences on the relative importance that investors place on financial vs environmental performance information.

This study presented participants with summarized financial and environmental performance information to maintain scale compatibility between financial and environmental measures. However, the information was presented in a format similar to those used by online brokerages.

This study suggests that financial statement preparers should consider investors’ views regarding the importance and value of environmental performance information when making decisions to disclose and obtain assurance on this information.

Standard setters should consider individual differences among investors when developing guidance regarding the disclosure and assurance of environmental performance information.

There is limited prior research which examines how investors’ views of the importance of environmental performance information may influence investment judgments. This research indicates that the strength of investors’ environmental responsibility importance moderates the previously reported influence of environmental performance and assurance information on investment judgments.

This paper aims to examine the reporting on sustainability and the level of compliance with international best practice, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), aimed at improving communicative value to users.

Using a qualitative approach, comprising interviews with senior managers and analysis of disclosures in annual reports of Thai-listed companies, this paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market setting.

This study finds that sustainability reporting and integrated reporting perspectives of sampling companies are aiming to satisfy information needs to stakeholders and value creation to external users. Sustainability disclosures are related to some aspect of integrated reporting (IR) principles but not all.

The findings of this study are based on the results from interviews and annual reports of five business sectors, and may therefore, not reflect the sustainability reporting practices and/or annual reports of other Thai-listed companies. Also, there is limited reporting on future outlook.

The findings suggest that while sustainability and IR is being adopted very widely, in many countries, there is much variation in reporting practice especially in our emerging country context adopting a “comply or explain” approach.

For the Thai-listed companies, IR systems could be in their early stages and still have long way to go. The results can greatly encourage Thai-listed firms to incorporate integrated information in annual reports based on international standards thus building trust in capital markets and wider society.

The findings contribute to the literature on sustainability reporting and on the level of compliance with international best practice such as GRI by providing empirical analysis of non-financial disclosures within publicly available reporting in Thailand.

A growing concern for environmental issues has resulted in calls for improvement in corporate environmental performance. In Australia, as elsewhere, this has involved the discussion as to the role of accounting and accountants in environmental management (Burritt and Gibson, 1993; Hrisak, 1995). This paper reports on the adoption of environmental accounting practices by Australian companies. Using a survey instrument, information was collected on the existence and development of environmental accounting processes within Top 500 Australian companies. The results indicate that many companies are utilising internal systems for the generation of environmental accounting data; however there appears to be a limited translation of the internal accounting information into external environmental reporting, despite a belief by many respondents that such information is useful to users of the annual report.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the internal and external factors related to the disclosure of environmental information in universities which reflect the actions carried out in these universities.

Taking as reference the first 200 universities in the Shanghai ranking, several factors associated with the degree of environmental information disclosure in universities – governance dimension, the relationship and participation of stakeholders, position and prestige as signs of the quality of the institution and cultural concern in the university’s country for the environment – are analysed.

The results obtained show that the size of the leadership team, stakeholder participation, the position of the university in rankings and cultural concern in the university’s country for the environment are determining factors in the university’s environmental actions and, consequently, in their disclosure. Other factors – such as the size of the university, the level of self-financing and financial autonomy – do not affect the disclosure of environmental information.

Scant research exists on the environmental commitments of universities; this paper aims to fill that gap. Their role as the main channel of research and as instructors of future professionals makes them points of reference in society. Research on university ranking has traditionally focussed on teaching and research results, but environmental issues are becoming increasingly important. This paper enumerates the factors that influence the dissemination of environmental information in the most prestigious universities. This research also provides an original approach by considering not only top-down but also bottom-up strategies through communication channels and the incidence of cultural factors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between “political competition” and “environmental reporting” by New Zealand local governments.

The research method includes a longitudinal analysis of environmental reporting by New Zealand local governments in their annual reports for the financial years 2005-2006 to 2009-2010. “Content analysis” was used to attach scores to the extent of environmental reporting. The “number of candidates divided by the number of available positions at the previous election” was used as the proxy for “political competition”.

The study reports a positive relationship between “political competition” and “environmental reporting” in 2007-2008. The number of local governments reporting voluntary environmental information increased in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 compared to 2005-2006, followed by a reduction in such numbers following the 2007-2008 financial year. This trend in disclosure can be attributed to the local government elections in October 2007. This finding is consistent with the expectation of “agency theory” and provides insight into the pattern of perceived agency costs. The study also finds a dearth in reporting “monetary” and “bad” news.

The study contributes towards the previous literature on environmental reporting by concentrating on the public sector and New Zealand, together with investigating the relationship of such reporting with “political competition” through a longitudinal analysis. The theoretical contribution of this study is the adoption of “agency theory” in the context of public sector voluntary reporting and investigating the significance attached by agents to environmental reporting to minimise agency cost. The practical contribution of the study is in the area of future development of reporting standards in regards to environmental reporting.

The aim of the paper is to investigate whether social disclosure and environmental disclosure have a substituting or a complementing effect in reducing information asymmetry between managers and stock market participants

This study attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of a firm's social and environmental disclosure strategy. The authors posit that this strategy simultaneously affects information asymmetry and disclosure.

Findings suggest that social disclosure and environmental disclosure substitute each other in reducing stock market asymmetry.

The measurement of social and environmental disclosure is based upon a coding instrument that makes some explicit assumptions about the value and relevance of information. Moreover, information asymmetry cannot be directly measured and is inferred from the behaviour of proxy variables such as share price volatility and bid‐ask spread.

Results suggest that social disclosure reinforces the informativeness of environmental disclosure for stock markets, even substituting for it under certain conditions. Stakeholders must assess and retain an increasing flow of information: a more efficient disclosure strategy becomes critical if firms want to convey the right picture of their CSR performance.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to explore the joint effect of social disclosure and environmental disclosure in reducing information asymmetry.

Focusing on a sample of firms from environmentally sensitive industries over several years, this study aims to reexamine the association between environmental disclosure and environmental performance.

The authors use a panel data analysis to examine how the interaction between environmental performance and economic and legitimacy factors influence firms’ environmental disclosures.

Results suggest that environmental performance moderates the effect of economic and legitimacy incentives on firms’ propensity to provide proprietary environmental disclosure, with both sets of incentives being influential. More specifically, there appears to be a reporting bias based on the firm’s environmental performance whereas the high-performers disclose more environmental information in the three following vehicles: annual report, 10-K and sustainability reports combined. Results also show that economic and legitimacy factors influence the disclosure decisions of the low and high environmental performers differently.

Understanding the determinants of environmental disclosure for high and low environmental performers helps regulators to close the reporting gap between these firms.

There is little evidence to suggest that firms with low-environmental performance attempt to use their disclosures to legitimize their environmental operations.

The study examines environmental disclosures of 78 firms over a period of 14 years in annual, 10-K and sustainability reports. The panel data analysis controls for significant cross-sectional and period effects.

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.

Reports on the results of a survey of various groups of annual report users as to the importance, or “materiality”, of environmental information to decisions they may wish to make. Also investigates how environmental information is ranked in importance relative to various other items of social and financial information. The user groups surveyed comprise shareholders, accounting academics, stockbrokers and financial analysts, financial institutions, environmental lobby groups, industry associations and other groups performing a review or oversight function. Reports the results which indicate that the majority of the annual report users surveyed believe environmental information to be material to their decisions, and that they seek the disclosure of this information in corporate annual reports. Although the results show that the users typically believe that environmental information is material, they further indicate that the majority of the user groups rank environmental information behind traditional financial information such as profits, net assets, cash flows, and dividend payments.