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This research paper aims to examine the influence of greater female participation on the board of directors on the environmental transparency of companies.

To achieve the purpose of this study, the authors analyzed the environmental transparency of 412 companies in the energy sector, headquartered in 19 countries, during a four-year period (2016 to 2019).

The data reveal that gender diversity has a positive effect on the environmental transparency of companies in developed countries and on the total model. Furthermore, after removing the US companies, the results remained the same, indicating that companies with more women on the board tend to have greater environmental transparency. Regarding corporate governance variables, the results show that companies that have a corporate social responsibility committee tend to have greater environmental transparency, both in emerging countries and in developed countries.

The findings indicate that if companies aim to have greater environmental transparency, they must encourage female participation on boards, giving them equal opportunities for professional growth. Organizations must deconstruct the ideology that women are fewer valuable members of their boards, which limits their contribution to organizational success. Additionally, regulators can encourage greater female participation on boards through the implementation of quota laws.

The authors’ evidence indicates that the presence of women on board is an antecedent of greater quality in the dissemination of environmental information. Thus, managers of companies in the energy sector must understand that diversity on the board affects communication with its stakeholders through environmental transparency.

Within the context of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance), environmental sustainability has taken on increased global importance in recent years. Similarly, real estate investment managers in developing their global real estate investment portfolios need a fuller understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability dimensions of these global real estate markets for more informed real estate investment decisions. Using the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index, this paper examines the environmental sustainability transparency status of 99 global real estate markets over 2016–2020 and explores various strategic issues regarding ESG and environmental sustainability; particularly the critical issues relating to climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon. The current status of environmental sustainability in these 99 real estate markets is assessed, with areas for “best practice” improvement identified to the benefit of real estate investment managers; particularly the improvements needed in ESG to support real estate investment in the emerging real estate markets.

The JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index is analysed to examine strategic issues relating to environmental sustainability transparency. 99 real estate markets are assessed globally for a range of critical ESG issues over 2016–2020. Differences between the developed and emerging real estate markets are highlighted.

Considerable variation was seen in the ESG and environmental sustainability practices, procedures and frameworks across these 99 real estate markets. This was particularly evident amongst the emerging real estate markets. Compared to the other five dimensions for real estate market transparency, environmental sustainability was seen to be well behind these other dimensions in most markets. Progress has been made in recent years, but it has been slow and steady rather than at a dynamic level. Clearly, more is needed globally to enhance the stature of environmental sustainability in the context of an increasing focus on ESG and specifically on climate risk mitigation, climate resilience and zero-carbon in real estate investment.

With ESG and environmental sustainability taking on increased importance across the international real estate markets, it is important that real estate fund managers have a full understanding of the ESG and environmental sustainability status of these real estate markets where they may be considering real estate investment opportunities; this includes both the developed and emerging real estate markets. This is essential to ensure future capital raising for new funds, as well as supporting the global ESG agenda by the real estate investment community. Specific strategies are also identified for emerging real estate markets to improve their environmental sustainability practices and ESG status.

This is the first paper to use the JLL GRETI sustainability sub-index to assess the environmental sustainability status of 99 real estate markets globally; providing strategic insights for real estate investment managers as they develop their global real estate portfolios and more fully embrace the challenges of ESG and environmental sustainability in the real estate space going forward. Specific strategies are clearly identified for all markets to improve their environmental sustainability ratings to the benefit of both global real estate investment and the broader communities.

We are in an information age, and the relationship between government governance and market efficiency has become closer. When examining the behavior of governance, the study of government transparency is very important. This paper examines the environmental governance performance of Guangdong province, the most developed coastal region in China.

DEA method is adopted to calculate the environmental governance efficiency by considering the expected output and the nonexpected output. Then Tobit regression was used to analyze the relationship between fiscal transparency and environmental governance efficiency.

Through a quantitative study of empirical data of Guangdong province from 2001 to 2017, it is found that fiscal transparency does have a significant positive impact on the efficiency of local environmental governance. Therefore, it is suggested that all regions in Guangdong should be more transparent in administration, intensify industrial transformation and upgrading, and better govern the regional ecological environment.

This paper examines the environmental governance performance of Guangdong province, the most developed coastal region in China. Guangdong has developed economy and people’s living standards are high, so the market and residents are particularly concerned about the government performance in environmental governance. Therefore, it is an important issue to explore the relationship between environmental governance and government transparency in Guangdong.

This study aims to investigate the role of regional environmental transparency on corporate environmental disclosure.

This study uses the introduction of a nationwide automated air pollution monitoring network in China as a quasi-natural experiment and employs regression analysis. Robustness checks, including parallel trend test and placebo test, are performed to test the robustness of the results.

Sharing air pollution data with the public can improve corporate environmental disclosure. Firms with poorer environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance prefer to disclose less informative information after the automated network is implemented compared with firms with better ESG performance. The relationship between information sharing and corporate environmental transparency is more pronounced when local air pollution is severer, firms face stronger investor scrutiny and firms are from heavily polluting industries. The mechanism tests suggest the automated system can draw public environmental attention and improve governments’ aspiration for environmental governance. Finally, corporate environmental disclosure can reduce stock price crash risk and cost of equity.

Real-time pollution data reporting is an important solution to raising public environmental awareness and then enhancing the effectiveness of pollution control.

This study has implications for policy-making regarding environmental governance and environmental disclosure.

This study confirms that pollution information transparency can motivate firms to increase environmental disclosure.

Given the rising global interest in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) index, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of social and ethical practices on the firm’s environmental disclosure level.

To test the study’s hypotheses, the authors applied linear regressions with a data panel using the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 and Bloomberg database from seven countries in analyzing data of 523 listed companies selected from the ESG index between 2005 and 2017. Similarly, as an extension of the research and to address the potential unobserved heterogeneity and the dynamic endogeneity, the authors exploited the dynamic dimension of the data set through the generalized moment method (GMM) and estimated the impact of the one-year lagged value of the environmental disclosure.

The empirical results indicate a growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical practices over the past decade. Besides, companies with a strong social and ethical commitment obtain significantly higher environmental disclosure scores. The results found with the GMM technique indicate the existence of dependence and continuity in environmental disclosure over time.

The research enables the information user to assess the transparency of the company as well as the quality of the information disclosed on its environment and its future growth opportunities in a context where the approach of business ethics occupies a central position in business valuation. The reached results suggest that the institutional and/or cultural factors affect top management’s environmental reporting behavior regarding the quality of published information.

This paper explores, for the first time, the effect of the social and ethical practices of ESG companies with seven different nationalities as well as its dynamic effect on the adoption of an environmental transparency strategy.

This study explores whether a firm's environmental and social (E&S) transparency affects corporate payout policies having two forms of dividend payout and stock repurchase payout.

Focusing on a large sample of S&P 500 firms, and utilizing Tobit estimators, the author examines whether a firm's environmental transparency and social transparency affect the levels of each dividend payout and stock repurchase payout. Transparency reflects comprehensive scores compiled by Bloomberg, capturing both the quantity (in terms of the number of data points) and the quality (with respect to objective and industry-relevant data points) of verified E&S information attributed to a firm's E&S practices.

The findings demonstrate that transparency, both environmental and social, relates to higher corporate payouts (i.e. higher dividend payout and higher stock repurchase payout). These positive relationships are magnified for firms suffering from high information asymmetry, low financial reporting quality and for those with weak governance. Moreover, the author finds that dividend payout is more stable in high E&S transparent firms than in low E&S transparent firms. The study findings continue to hold after a battery of robustness and sensitivity checks such as alternative measures, specifications, estimators, use of the instrumental variable regression approach and mitigation of omitted variable bias

The study findings suggest that investors' interests (demanding for high corporate payouts) and other stakeholders' interests (demanding for high E&S transparency) are not necessarily in conflict, and investors' demands can be met while maintaining commitment to high E&S transparency. In addition, the study results imply that higher E&S transparency complements higher corporate payouts and signals to the market both a firm's commitment to E&S transparency and its ability to have high corporate payouts. In this line, the study findings clarify the high value of E&S transparency screening in investors' decision-making process as such transparency leads to higher corporate payouts for investors (i.e. facilitating wealth transfer to shareholders). Finally, the study findings are relevant to standard setters and regulators who emphasize the importance of E&S transparency.

By integrating two distinct streams of literature on corporate finance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), the author introduces E&S transparency as a novel nonfinancial driver of corporate payout policies. Finally, the study findings are in line with the notion that firm transparency (reflected in E&S transparency) can be a crucial element in justifying a firm's corporate payout policies and, in an overall view, firm policies.

Wide differences in response rates to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP’s) climate change program between countries have been explained by legal origins and the varying extent of environmental regulation. This paper seeks to enhance the explanation by examining the relevance of two dimensions of “democratic capital” – both the influence of countries’ experiences with democratic government recruitment are considered, as well as experiences with civil liberties. In addition, it is examined whether these forms of democratic capital are mediated by environmental regulation.

The authors draw upon the literature on the relationship between political regime form and environmental policy and the environmental disclosure literature debate. Hypotheses are based on institutional and stakeholder theory. Methodologically, multilevel regression analysis is used.

Results show that the history of democratic government recruitment is a relevant factor to explain firms’ disclosure decisions. The amount of freedom in civil society seems to also matter, but results are less clear in this regard. The hypothesis concerning the mediation effects of environmental regulation could not be corroborated. Findings, thus, corroborate the claim that standards of informational transparency flourish best in countries with a pluralistic political culture.

The results imply that voluntary carbon transparency may thrive as democratization advances, but its success may also be endangered by the recent revitalization of authoritarianism.

The authors deliver the first paper which tests the hypotheses on the influence of the “democratic capital” on the countries-of-origin on the firms’ carbon disclosure decisions, based on a multilevel analysis.

To help brands persuasively communicate their environmentally responsible initiatives, this study aims to involve two experiments, examining the impact of brand schema, information transparency and skepticism toward climate change for brands both familiar and unfamiliar to US consumers.

Two online experiments were designed recruiting a total of 510 participants. The design incorporates both message and treatment variance to increase internal and external validity of the study. Data collected were analyzed using PROCESS, a regression-based conditional path analysis technique.

The results indicated that for both familiar and unfamiliar brands, increased congruity of consumers' schemas to information presented in brands' pro-environmental messages led consumers to evaluate the messages as more persuasive, have more positive opinions about brands' environmentally responsible initiatives as well as behavioral intentions toward the brand. Also, presence of high information transparency on environmental responsibility-related messages influenced consumers' schemas positively, and in turn, their evaluations were more favorable. However, consumers’ climate change skepticism seemed to influence unfamiliar, not familiar brands.

The study provides both theoretical and managerial implications. The findings are important for established apparel brands that suffer from negative reputations, but are willing to revitalize their images, and for new ventures who want to establish their image as environmentally responsible.

This study aims to use social network analysis to (1) investigate public opinions on social media regarding apparel supply chain transparency and (2) identify key themes and the major communities discussing apparel supply chain transparency.

Data mining-based social network analysis was used to investigate the pattern of discussions regarding apparel supply chain transparency on Twitter and Instagram.

Both Instagram and Twitter networks exhibited high interest in environmental, working condition and community support in apparel supply chain as explained by the moral responsibility framework of corporate sustainability despite the intended theme of the campaign to promote transparency in terms of working conditions specifically. However, some inconsistencies were found regarding the importance of these communities in the network, suggesting that while survey methods hold significance in measuring user intension, the reaction-based user-generated data on social media can be useful to measure users' true behavior. Also, while Twitter network was dominated by knowledge-based messages, the Instagram network had emotion-driven messages.

By conducting this study, the authors will not only contribute to the existing literature of social media usage in the apparel industry but will also provide a foundation for the use of social network analysis to analyze user-generated data on social media, as this method is fairly new in the textile and apparel industry-related research. The authors also wish to help businesses and policy makers identify specific actionable areas where they are lagging and hence further improve their overall performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of firm’s deviant strategy on analysts’ earnings forecasts and further examine the effects of firm’s information transparency and environmental uncertainty on these relationships from information asymmetry perspective.

The sample includes listed firms on Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange during the period 2007-2013.

The results indicate that firms’ deviant strategies have effects on analysts’ earnings forecasts, in particular, firms with extreme strategies have less analysts following, larger forecast error and dispersion compared with firms following industry norms. Moreover, information transparency and environmental uncertainty have effects on the relationship between strategic deviance and analysts’ earnings forecasts.

The empirical results of this paper provide strong evidence that strategy information is an important source of information for analysts’ earnings forecasts, which shows that analysts should pay attention to not only financial information but also the strategic information, especially when the information is related to strategic choice. In addition, it is necessary for investors to focus on strategic information to have a better understanding on financial information of enterprises and make better investment decisions.

The findings of this study indicate that corporate strategic deviance has an effect on analysts’ earnings forecasting behavior. This study enriches research studies on corporate strategy and external stakeholders and complements related research on analysts’ earnings forecasts from strategic perspective and information asymmetry perspective.