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The research investigates valuers' understanding of the value of sustainability in property and its' consideration in valuation practice in Australia. This paper explores valuers' perceptions of the relationships between sustainability and market values, sustainability and valuation variables, and the value influence of industry sustainability certification schemes. Further, this paper tracks prevalence of certified buildings in Australian commercial markets and the evolution of valuers' knowledge of sustainability certifications used in Australia.

This paper reports on the next rendition of a longitudinal study examining valuers’ practice in Australia. This research explores the evolution of Australian valuers' perception and knowledge of sustainability in valuation practice. The survey data has been periodically collected from practising valuers from 2007 to 2021. The survey questions investigate valuers' knowledge development, understanding, reporting and consideration of the relationship between sustainability and market value.

The results have identified the evolution of the influence of normative research on valuers' perceptions of the relationship between sustainability and value; with a clearer understanding emerging over time of where the value relationships are identified in valuation variables. Greater alignment between empirical Australian studies and valuers' perceptions of the influence of sustainability ratings on value, demonstrate the value connection for higher rated buildings under NABERS (energy rating) and Green Star. Whilst only 41% of the study's participants are including sustainability in their valuation reports, they include a higher level of commentary on building descriptions and initiatives, building ratings, and reporting of owner and tenant objectives, than in previous studies. Knowledge development relating to sustainability certification tool, NABERS was identified. This is likely linked to the introduction of mandatory disclosure legislation. This has also led to increased awareness and valuers' knowledge of the differences between the two key rating tools used in Australia.

The research has several limitations: firstly, recruitment of valuers and the number of valuers' responses has varied over time; secondly, due to collection methods respondents have a greater likelihood of having an interest in and knowledge of sustainability creating potential for positive bias; thirdly, respondents may have responded to the survey in different years, but due to anonymity there has been no ability to track this. The results provide insights into the Australian valuation profession but may not be fully representative of the profession overall in Australia.

The broader agenda of net zero, climate change, mitigation and carbon requirements, whether driven by market forces or government legislation, are generating changes in property markets as investors' reconsider their positions and model the implications of carbon emissions on their bottom lines. Introductions of policy and legislation over time in the Australian context have led to changes in valuation practice and increasing consideration of energy efficiency and ratings in the valuation of assets. However, further guidance and research still is required in Australia to assist in the knowledge development of valuers, and their ability to consider the emerging effects of sustainability, net zero and other market driven objectives including legislation, and how these may affect or influence their evaluation of market evidence and thus property values.

The research has tracked valuers' understanding, knowledge, and consideration of sustainability and energy efficiency in valuation practice since 2007. In that time the research has found that, as the market has evolved and more rated buildings are built (or retrofitted), so too has valuers' knowledge and consideration in valuation practices evolved. Valuers are more engaged with industry rating tools such as NABERS. This suggests that the Australian mandatory disclosure policies have contributed to changes in the market, which are then interpreted by valuers and reflected in their perceptions and consideration of energy ratings in valuation practice.

This study aims to examine anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) following government legislation, specifically the UK Bribery Act, 2010, through focusing on the UK extractive industry.

This study uses content analysis for data analysis with an ACD checklist developed to capture ACD in annual reports during the period 2003–2019.

The study found an increase in ACD following 2010, with companies answering ACD questions and addressing categories that they previously ignored.

Most of the previous studies have examined voluntary ACD; this study contributes to the literature by applying an index developed from government regulation to investigate the difference that regulation can make to disclosure. Hence, this study provides evidence of how, from an institutional perspective, legislation plays an important role in facilitating and endorsing anti-corruption reporting.

Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has been growing exponentially over the last two decades, their quality and effectiveness in managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance have been questioned. Addressing these concerns, several jurisdictions, including EU Member States, introduced mandatory NFR regimes. However, the evidence on whether such regulation truly translates into enhanced ESG performance remains scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of the EU’s Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-financial Reporting Directive, NFRD) on the ESG scores of Polish companies.

Drawing upon institutional and strategic perspectives on legitimacy theory, the authors test the relationship between the introduction of the NFRD and the ESG scores derived from the Refinitiv database, using a sample of all those companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange whose disclosure allows for measuring ESG performance (yielding 171 firm-year observations from 43 companies).

This study’s findings show an improvement of ESG performance following the introduction of the NFRD. The difference-in-differences approach indicates that the improvement is larger for companies that are subject to the legislation when it comes to overall ESG performance, particularly for environmental and social performance. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no significant effect is found for performance in the governance dimension.

This study investigates the role of transnational mandatory reporting regulation in the first years of its enactment. The evidence offers insights into the effects of disclosure legislation in the context of an underdeveloped institutional environment.

This study aims to study the response of the stock market to the announcement of compulsory environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure regulation in the context of the Indian economy – one of the largest emerging economies. The study also examines the role of carbon sensitivity and pre-ESG disclosure.

Daily stock price data of 940 listed companies has been collected for 276 trading days to compute abnormal returns. The current study is based on event study methodology to analyze the announcement effect of disclosure regulations. Furthermore, to check the robustness of results, cross-sectional regression has been applied to correct for potential heterogeneity.

Results of the event study signify that the equity share market has reacted positively and significantly to the mandatory ESG disclosure regulation. Furthermore, the study also confirms the mitigating role of carbon sensitivity and pre-ESG disclosure as carbon nonsensitive (non predisclosure) firms have witnessed a more intense effect of regulation as compared to sensitive (predisclosed) corporations.

Current findings assist managers in understanding investor perception toward nonfinancial disclosures. Corporate managers can use disclosure as a tool to enhance the firm value and reduce information asymmetry by providing relevant information. Furthermore, policymakers can use the findings of present research to disseminate the advantages of adopting ESG disclosure practices thereby improving the transparency and governance among business firms.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence on the market response to compulsory ESG disclosure framework in the emerging context of India. Furthermore, considering the infancy stage of ESG research, the present research contributes to the body of knowledge by empirically testing the disclosure theories.

This research aims to understand how companies communicate their understanding of water-related challenges and their responses to identify new pathways for addressing this challenge to further advance rising interest in water sustainability strategies of corporations.

Through a content analysis of corporate disclosures, this paper identifies the actions and challenges reported by 35 FTSE 100 companies. These are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to explore variations in the subject of disclosure and the narrative framing.

The findings identify a clear split across the types of water sustainability reporting according to the industrial sector and subject of disclosure, linking to different narratives used according to legitimacy pressures.

This paper finds that energy, materials and consumer staples sectors consistently outperform other sectors on the reporting of water issues and the scope which is covered. This has implications for the design of regulations and incentives to increase water sustainability management activities in large companies, which currently under-report.

This paper highlights the need for policy implementation to further integrate water-related topics into company reporting and identifies situations where the narrative disclosed may distort the underlying situation that is being communicated.

This paper explores the narratives used in company reporting to identify the challenges related to water sustainability and the actions taken in response. This can contribute to developing a pathway towards increased water sustainability (e.g. through new policy design).

This paper aims to analyse the impact of the European Union (EU) Directive on the quality of sustainability reporting under the institutional theory lens. Specifically, the authors evaluate what kind of institutional pressure has the highest impact on the quality of corporate disclosure on sustainability issues.

The authors build a quality index based on the content analysis of sustainability information disclosed, before and after the transposition of the Directive, by Italian and Spanish companies belonging to different industries. The authors use an OLS regression model to analyse the effect of coercive, normative and mimetic forces on the quality of the sustainability reports.

The results highlight that normative and mimetic mechanisms positively affect the quality of sustainability reporting, whereas there is no evidence regarding coercive mechanisms, indicating that the new requirements do not provide a significant contribution to the development of better reporting practices, at least in the two analysed countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies assessing the quality of sustainability reporting through an analysis involving the period before and after the implementation of the EU Directive. It enriches the literature on institutional theory by analysing how the different dimensions of isomorphism affect the quality of information disclosed by companies according to the EU requirements. It contributes to a better understanding of the impact of the non-financial information Directive, and the results of this paper can be relevant for regulators, practitioners and academia, especially in view of the adoption of the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive proposal.

This paper aims to examine the nature and extent of disclosure on the use of big data by online platform companies and how these disclosures address and discharge stakeholder accountability.

Content analysis of annual reports and data policy documents of 100 online platform companies were used for this study. More specifically, the study develops a comprehensive big data disclosure framework to assess the nature and extent of disclosures provided in corporate reports. This framework also assists in evaluating the effect of the size of the company, industry and country in which they operate on disclosures.

The analysis reveals that most companies made limited disclosure on how they manage big data. Only two of the 100 online platform companies have provided moderate disclosures on big data related issues. The focus of disclosure by the online platform companies is more on data regulation compliance and privacy protection, but significantly less on the accountability and ethical issues of big data use. More specifically, critical issues, such as stakeholder engagement, breaches of customer information and data reporting and controlling mechanisms are largely overlooked in current disclosures. The analysis confirms that current attention has been predominantly given to powerful stakeholders such as regulators as a result of compliance pressure while the accountability pressure has yet to keep up the pace.

The study findings may be limited by the use of a new accountability disclosure index and the specific focus on online platform companies.

Although big data permeates, the number of users and uses grow and big data use has become more ingrained into society, this study provides evidence that ethical and accountability issues persist, even among the largest online companies. The findings of this study improve the understanding of the current state of online companies’ reporting practices on big data use, particularly the issues and gaps in the reporting process, which will help policymakers and standard setters develop future data disclosure policies.

From these findings, the study improves the understanding of the current state of online companies’ reporting practices on big data use, particularly the issues and gaps in the reporting process – which are helpful for policymakers and standard setters to develop data disclosure policies.

This study provides an analysis of ethical and social issues surrounding big data accountability, an emerging but increasingly important area that needs urgent attention and more research. It also adds a new disclosure dimension to the existing accountability literature and provides practical suggestions to balance the interaction between online platform companies and their stakeholders to promote the responsible use of big data.

Social and environmental reports have become an increasingly regulated area of corporate reporting and communication. Nevertheless, the substance and level of detail present in such disclosures is largely at the discretion of companies, which has implications for the value of such disclosures to stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to shed light on social visibility as a determinant of the variation in substance found in social disclosures in order to understand underlying reasons for why some firms offer more substance than others in their social disclosures.

Based on a number of hypotheses, which are combined into social visibility, the paper investigates whether a firm's social visibility is a determinant of substance in social disclosures. To this end, the case of modern slavery statements is used as a recently introduced and legally mandated form of social sustainability disclosures.

The findings suggest that social visibility can explain part of the variation in the substance of social disclosures. However, for the remaining part, it is argued that substance in social disclosures can also be driven by institutional logics, which shape organizational outcomes in specific contexts, but are largely unobservable.

This article contributes new insights to the literature on the relationship between corporate social visibility and the substance of social disclosures.

This study aims to examine the impact of mandatory adoption of The Act 2013 in UK on voluntary carbon disclosure. Mandatory adoption of The Act 2013 in UK is a compelling setting to examine this research question because it is an exogenous imposed event and is unlikely to be affected by disclosure choice.

This study uses a difference-in-differences research design to examine the impact of mandatory adoption of The Act 2013 in UK on voluntary carbon disclosure. The treatment sample includes 451 UK firms subject to mandatory adoption of The Act 2013, and the control sample includes firms from 15 EU countries that did not mandate adoption during the sample period.

The authors document an increase in the quantity and quality of voluntary carbon disclosure following adoption of The Act 2013 in the treatment sample relative to the control sample. They also find that firms with better environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance experience a highly significant increase in voluntary carbon disclosure after adoption of The Act 2013. For firms from carbon-intensive vs less-carbon-intensive sectors, the results suggest that firms in carbon-intensive sectors experience a greater increase in the propensity of voluntary disclosure after adoption of The Act.

The authors examine the impact of mandatory adoption of The Act 2013 in UK on voluntary carbon disclosure and the impact of firms’ ESG activity on the relationship between voluntary and mandatory carbon disclosure. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this insight has never been documented in the literature.