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The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive comprehensive analysis of sustainability reporting (SR) and assurance in Portugal after the onset of the most recent economic crisis.

The authors analyze 290 sustainability reports for the years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and find those that include assurance statements and characterize them.

The authors present evidence supporting the view that the Portuguese sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) market follows the international trends and suggest that the most recent economic crisis had a negative effect in terms of publication of sustainability reports but not in terms of its quality and assurance.

The authors merely provide descriptive evidence of SR and the assurance thereof in Portugal.

The authors contribute significantly to the literature on SRA in peripheral countries and in the period of crisis.

The paper aims to analyse the engagement in sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by a sample of Portuguese firms between 2008 and 2011.

Bivariate and multivariate non-parametric statistics is used to analyse some factors that influence the decision to have sustainability reports assured.

Results indicate that size, leverage, profitability, listing status and industrial affiliation are determinants of SRA, whereas type of ownership is not. A downward trend in sustainability reporting and its assurance was also detected.

The sample is small.

It adds to the scarce research on SRA by providing new empirical data in a context of crisis and extends prior research by analysing the effects of listing status and type of ownership.

This paper aims to investigate whether religiosity and religious diversity affect the adoption of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. To this aim, a theoretical framework is developed using the social norm, signalling and agency theories.

A pooled logit regression model is applied on a sample of 2,541 firm-year observations collected from the most sustainable companies in Europe in the period between 2004 and 2015 to test the effect of religiosity on SRA adoption. Different analyses are used to check for the robustness of the findings and a generalized method of moments (GMM) is used to address potential endogeneity issues.

The results of this study show that companies based in highly religious countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices to show compliance with the religious social norms of their stakeholders. The results also show that companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices than those operating in Protestant countries. This may be due to the fact that the structural organization of Catholicism is based on a vertical, top-down control system, which does not foster trust and requires constant assurance. This explains the emphasis placed on SRA by stakeholders adhering to Catholicism. Stakeholders from Protestant countries, on the other hand, tend to rely more on the principles of social ethics and social mutual control that characterize their doctrine and, therefore, do not need any additional, external assurance of corporate commitment to sustainability.

This paper provides new insights into the influence that religiosity and religious diversity have on SRA. This study also provides evidence on the usefulness of social norm theory for conducting empirical research into corporate practices and could set an example for future studies in this field.