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The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of the organisational forms comprising the Australian condominium tourism accommodation sector.

A total of 34 exploratory interviews were conducted with interviewees representing a cross‐section of interests in condominium tourism accommodation operations.

An original hierarchical typology is developed. The structuring criteria employed for the hierarchy include: whether a condominium complex is in a hotel or apartment complex, whether it is branded and whether the condominiums are serviced.

The findings reported will greatly advance the capacity to provide a meaningful commentary on the nature of condominium tourism accommodation complexes and to understand key issues associated with different forms of condominium tourism accommodation services provided.

The study suffers from the normal limitations associated with the subjective interpretation of qualitative data. In addition, the fast evolving nature of the condominium tourism accommodation sector signifies that the typology advanced should be viewed as somewhat time‐specific.

Despite the huge growth in condominium‐based tourism accommodation worldwide, there has been a scarcity of research directed to the phenomenon. The study can thus be seen to be highly original.

In this paper, the authors examine the association between the banking regulatory regime and the quality of bank earnings. We further investigate whether the banking agency regulatory characteristics moderate the association between banking regulation and earnings quality.

Using panel data spanning 29 years over the period 1991 to 2019, the authors model bank earnings quality as a function of scores for banking regulation for 170 banks in the East African region using both the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation methods.

The results, which are robust for endogeneity among other checks, reveal a positive impact of bank regulatory mechanisms on the quality of bank earnings. The authors further establish differential impact of specific regulatory mechanisms, with some contributing positively toward earnings management while others contributing negatively toward earnings management. The differential impacts of banking regulation on earnings quality are also manifested in the country-level analyses.

First, the study utilises a mix of bank-specific, country-specific as well as economy-specific variables in one dataset. Second, the authors utilise survey-based data using the World Bank's Bank Regulation and Supervision Surveys (BRSS) for the periods 1999 to 2019. The authors assume that the bank regulatory mechanisms in place pre-1999 are close to the mechanisms in place as per the 1999 BRSS. Given limitations in data availability, the authors are not able to control for banks engaging in multiple activities such as insurance, underwriting of securities, FinTechs, among others.

The results are useful in bridging the gap between theory and practice regarding the expected effect of strict banking regulations on the quality of earnings in Eastern African Banks. For the positive impact of banking regulation on bank earnings quality to be felt, the institutional, social and environmental specificities of the five selected countries need to be adequately developed and taken into consideration.

This study is perhaps the first to utilise a large dataset of commercial banks from countries in a developing region characterised by relatively lower enforcement and dynamism in the banking regulation. Further, in-depth studies on the association between banking regulation and earnings quality remain sparse.

In this paper, the authors investigate whether the systemic local banking crises (LBCs) and global financial crisis (GFC) impact the association between bank profit efficiency and earnings quality in developing economies.

Using panel data spanning 29 years over the period 1991–2019 for 169 banks drawn from five East African countries, the authors perform difference-in-difference multivariate analyses using the generalised method of moments (GMM) system estimator on a sample consisting of 2,261 bank-year observations.

The results, which are robust for endogeneity and other checks, show that banks with higher profit efficiency consistently report higher quality earnings. The authors further establish that whereas systemic LBCs contribute negatively to bank earnings quality, the GFC tends to have a positive impact. These results are upheld when the joint impacts of both systemic LBCs, GFC and profit efficiency on earnings quality are considered. The positive influence of profit efficiency and GFC on earnings quality is pronounced under income-decreasing earnings management. The impacts of profit efficiency, LBCs and GFC on earnings quality appear to be non-monotonic and vary across the sampled countries.

The study's findings are based on banks in five developing countries within a regional economic bloc. Additional studies could focus on other economic blocs for enhanced generalisability of the findings. In addition, some of the variables examined are studied at bank-level, while other variables are at country-level. Finally, the study establishes an association between the variables of interest, and this does not necessarily imply causation.

The results provide useful insights to bank regulatory and supervisory agencies on the need to exercise increased risk-based scrutiny over bank loan loss provisioning and minimum loan loss reserve requirements. From an audit perspective, auditors need to be cautious and apply an enhanced risk-based audit especially when auditing banks during and after a financial, banking or systemic crisis. Credit rating agencies need to pay closer attention to the LLPs of distressed banks. Finally, bank investors and customers should be cautious when using bank financial statements, since bank managers of poorly performing banks might engage in aggressive earnings management.

The study is perhaps the first to examine the joint effects of systemic LBCs on the association between bank profit efficiency and the quality of earnings in a larger dataset of banks in a developing regional economic bloc. The authors also employ the GMM system estimator in the modelling, which helps address some weaknesses in prior studies.

Cocoa is regarded as a brown-golden crop, but its value chain activities are dominated by the elderly. Hence, focussing attention on the young generation of farmers is the surest way to reverse this trend and secure the future of the cocoa industry. This paper, therefore explores factors influencing youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Ghana.

Primary data were collected using a multistage sampling technique. The authors used a semi-structured questionnaire in collecting data via interviews. Through the theory of utility maximization, a multivariate probit (MVP) model was estimated to identify factors influencing youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Ghana.

The author found that some of the value chain activities are complementary, while others are substitutes. Participation in cocoa value chain activities is influenced by access to land, participation in training programmes in cocoa production, membership of Next Generation Cocoa Youth Programme (MASO), access to agricultural credit and other demographic characteristics.

Relevant information and youth-targeted projects enhance their participation in value chain activities.

This paper is one of the few studies that empirically analyses drivers of youth participation in cocoa value chain activities in Africa.

The purpose of this study is to examine efficiency differences among petroleum firms based on their ownership status, with the aim of helping these firms understand how specific levels of state-ownership affects efficiency and to bring new perspective to the ownership-performance literature.

The study uses ten-year data (2001-2010) of 32 global petroleum firms categorized into four groups based on ownership types. The metafrontier analysis is used with the dynamic slack-based measure to estimate dynamic efficiency differences among the groups while respectively, accounting for carryover variables such as oil and gas reserves.

Fully state-owned firms outperformed private, majority and minority state-owned firms, indicating that not all types of state-owned petroleum firms are outperformed by private firms. Additionally, firms with shared ownership between state and private are seen to have a lesser comparative advantage in the industry than those with full private or state ownership.

Jointly owned petroleum firms should consider converting ownership to either full private or full state control. Conflict management measures should be used to handle possible conflicts between different shareholding groups.

This is among the first studies to sub-group state ownership into various levels to comprehensively examine specific levels of state ownership that is detrimental to the performance of petroleum firms. It is also the premier oil efficiency study to use the metafrontier framework to cater for group heterogeneity. The study treats oil and gas reserves as interconnecting variables that are not consumed only in the period for which they are discovered to ensure fair assessment.

This study aims to examine the causal relationship between mandatory CSR disclosure and financial audit efficiency.

The authors use the unique institutional setting of China, where a subset of listed firms are mandated to disclose their corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. The authors use propensity score matching and difference-in-differences approaches to compare audit efficiency in the pre- and post-mandatory CSR disclosure periods between the treatment and control groups. The regression models are estimated with robust standard errors clustered at the firm level.

This study finds that following China’s adoption of the mandatory disclosure of CSR, audit report lags decreased by 6% on average, suggesting that audit efficiency improved greatly following mandatory CSR disclosure. Moreover, this association is stronger when firms have better CSR performance, higher CSR report preparation costs, more earnings management before disclosure regulations and better internal controls and when firms belong to high-profile industries and in Big 4 (Big 10) accounting firms. Moreover, neither audit quality nor audit fees decrease when shorter audit lags occur for firms with mandatory CSR disclosures. Overall, the evidence suggests that mandatory CSR disclosure has a positive effect on audit efficiency and that the improvement of audit efficiency does not come as a consequence of reducing audit fees or deteriorating audit quality.

The results reported in this study have practical and policy implications for policymakers, accounting firms and auditors to pay more attention to CSR information.

This study provides evidence of the causal relationship between mandatory CSR disclosure regulation and audit efficiency. It enriches the research on audit service production efficiency from the perspective of nonfinancial information disclosure.

This paper aims to investigate whether providing voluntary external assurance on voluntary environmental information by firms operating in environmentally sensitive industries (ESI) is relevant in terms of market value. It also examines how various characteristics of assurance statements (i.e. level of assurance, scope of assurance and provider of assurance) affect the value-relevance of environmental disclosure by ESI firms.

To mitigate the endogeneity problem, the authors use the two-step generalized method of moments estimation approach.

Focusing on annual and social reports of French companies listed in the SBF120 index, results show that environmental disclosure by ESI firms and its assurance are destructive in terms of market value. Moreover, while providing a broader scope of assurance and having a professional accountant as the assurance provider enhance the value relevance of environmental reporting of the whole sample, this is unlikely to be the case for ESI firms. In particular, a higher level of environmental disclosure is financially rewarded by market participants for ESI firms that provide a higher level of assurance.

The study provides a better understanding of the circumstances under which market participants assign value to voluntary environmental information disclosed by companies operating in ESI. It also provides insights into the value added to different characteristics inherent in the quality of assurance provided with regard to environmental disclosure.

The study indicates that the institutional context of the relationship between the firm and its shareholders influence the value obtained from assurance. Results provide value insights regarding cultural and legal dimensions of environmental reporting.

The study extends the prior literature on the capital market benefits of voluntary assurance practices by focusing on the French legal environment. France can be considered as a new institutional context that has been little addressed by the existing literature.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between sustainability reporting and firm value, and subsequently, ascertains the moderating effect of assurance and the type of assurer on the sustainability reporting–firm value nexus.

The study is based on sample firms from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in South Africa. The fixed‐effect panel data analysis method is used to estimate the coefficients of the variables.

A significant positive relationship is found between sustainability reporting and firm value. The results also suggest that sustainability assurance has significant explanatory power on firm value. Furthermore, the authors found that the market is unable to distinguish between sustainability assurance services provided by Big 4 audit firms and specialist consultant firms.

The authors expect managers will see sustainability reporting and assurance as a business strategy with incremental market value. The study should also serve as a reference for stakeholders engaged in the advocacy for the adoption of sustainability assurance practices on the JSE and other emerging markets.

The study finds that the South African market rewards firms that purchase third-party assurance to guarantee the integrity of their corporate social responsibility reports. This understanding could help encourage more firms to embrace the concept of sustainability assurance.

The study offers a first-hand information on how market participants in Johannesburg, an emerging economy, view sustainability assurance and the services provided by the different assurers.

This paper aims to provide insight into how environmental information is reflected in the market value of listed Italian companies. In particular, it investigates the value relevance of voluntary environmental information disclosed by companies and the influence of environmental policies assurance.

The method used is the accounting-based valuation model used by Cormier and Magnan (2007), analogue to the one developed by Ohlson (1995), which considers market value of equity as a function of book value, accounting earnings and environmental indicators as provided by Bloomberg. The analysis in this paper is based on the environmental disclosure score (i.e. proxy of a company’s transparency in reporting environmental information) and the assurance practice (i.e. whether or not the company’s environmental policies were subject to an independent assessment for the reporting period).

Results partially support initial conjectures, i.e. the environmental voluntary disclosure represents value-relevant information positively correlated with firms’ market value. Furthermore, when such information is subject to an independent assessment for the reporting period, an incremental benefit deriving from the assurance of such information cannot be found. This is similar to the findings of Cho et al. (2014), i.e. the market perceptions on assurance may need to be developed before the environmental report assurance market in Italy can develop.

Limitations are related to the small sample located in a single country, meaning that results may not be generalisable. The implications are that other methods may provide further value, but these may need to be based either on different data or larger samples (i.e. cross-country analysis).

The increasing importance of environmental issues for economic decision-making and the presence of ethical investors create incentives for environmental information disclosure, which is becoming increasingly significant for comprehensive firm valuation. However, for this information to serve its role, disclosure must be credible. Hence, there are many companies that resort to voluntary assurance of environmental policies, motivated by a need to demonstrate credibility with external stakeholders. Notwithstanding, the influence of verification practice over environmental disclosure on a low regulation country has not yet been completely explored. This paper aims to fill this gap.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of structural and demographic board diversity as well as board tenure on family firms' environmental performance, by analyzing the differences between family and non-family businesses and within family firms.

Tobit regressions are applied to investigate the effect of independent directors, CEO non-duality, board gender diversity and board tenure on environmental performance. The study also controls for other board and firm characteristics, as well as for time, industry and country-fixed effects. In doing so, the authors rely on a sample of non-financial listed firms from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal over the period 2014–2021.

The authors find that women on the board positively influence environmental performance and this effect is significant only in family firms, although board tenure negatively moderates the relationship. Board independence significantly affects environmental performance only in non-family firms. A strong presence of family directors has a negative effect on family firms' environmental performance, especially when directors' turnover is low.

This paper examines the unexplored relationship between structural board diversity and environmental performance in family companies. This study provides empirical evidence on the association between gender diversity and family firms' environmental performance focusing for the first time on a European setting. Moreover, this study provides evidence of a different effect of board tenure in family and non-family businesses.