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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.

This study aims to analyse the relationship between countries’ regulatory context and voluntary carbon disclosures. To date, little attention has been paid to how specific climate change-related regulation influences companies’ climate change disclosures, especially voluntary carbon reporting.

The New Institutional Sociology perspective has been adopted to examine the pressure of a country’s climate change regulation on voluntary carbon reporting. This research uses Tobit regression to analyse data from 2,183 companies in 12 countries that were invited to respond to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire in 2015.

The results show that countries’ specific climate change-related regulation does influence both the participation of its companies in the CDP and their quality, as measured by the CDP disclosure score.

The sample is restricted to 12 countries’ regulatory environment. Thus, caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other institutional contexts.

The results are of use to regulators and policymakers to better understand how specific climate change-related regulation influences voluntary carbon disclosure. Investors may also benefit from this research, as it shows which institutional contexts present greater regulatory stringency and how companies in more stringent environments take advantage of synergy to disclose high-quality carbon information.

By linking regulatory and voluntary reporting, this study sheds light on how companies use voluntary carbon reporting to adapt to social expectations generated in their institutional context.

This is the first research that considers specific climate change-related regulation in the study of voluntary carbon disclosures.

This study aims to examine the reaction of stakeholders (i.e. capital providers) to climate-related corporate reporting. Climate-related corporate reporting is captured by the level of voluntary carbon disclosure, while the recognition and appreciation of capital providers are captured through the cost of equity capital (COE).

This study uses a sample including the 350 largest companies by market capitalization on the London Stock Exchange, UK (FTSE350) from 2015 to 2019. The authors use fixed-effects regression models to examine the effect of climate-related corporate reporting on the COE.

This study finds that voluntary carbon disclosure proxied by carbon disclosure score is negatively associated with COE. This suggests that firms’ superior quality disclosure of carbon information could contribute to a lower COE. This implies that the market and stakeholders positively appreciate the involvement in climate-related reporting by businesses.

The finding provides insights to regulators, investors and other stakeholders in terms of the positive economic implication of actively engaging in reducing climate change impact through voluntary carbon disclosure. These findings also motivate corporates to be proactively involved in climate-related reporting by extending the quality of carbon information disclosure.

This study aims to report the extent of voluntary carbon emission disclosures by major Australian companies during the years 2006 to 2008. This paper provides contemporary data and explanations about carbon emissions reporting in Australia. Additionally, the paper aims to determine the variables that explain the extent of carbon disclosures.

The carbon disclosure score is measured directly from individual companies' annual reports and sustainability reports. A checklist is established to determine the breadth and depth of the information related to climate change and carbon emissions incorporated in these publicly available reports.

The overall carbon disclosure score has increased significantly over the authors' research period. Furthermore, regression results show that larger firms with higher visibility tend to make more comprehensive carbon disclosures. Overall, the authors' results indicate that the legislation of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (the NGER Act) in 2007 may have enhanced the voluntary carbon emission disclosures in 2008, even though the NGER Act was not operative until the 2009 financial year. From a theoretical perspective, the findings of the paper are consistent with legitimacy theory.

Previous studies examining environmental disclosures in Australia are based on a time period prior to widespread public discussion and interest in climate change and carbon emissions. By investigating voluntary disclosures made by large Australian companies around the time that the mandatory emission reporting scheme was introduced, this paper investigates whether the prominence of discussion and impending operation of the mandatory environmental disclosures have led to a greater extent of voluntary carbon disclosures. The findings can help regulators draft appropriate legislation that targets industries and specific practices where disclosure is of greatest importance to relevant stakeholders. In addition, an understanding of who and why entities disclose carbon gas emission information can arm green groups and other stakeholders with an appropriate level of understanding about the motivation for such disclosures.

This study aims to investigate the association between corporate carbon risk and debt maturity and the moderating role of voluntary disclosure, within the context of South Africa, an emerging player in the climate policy debate.

Based on the insights drawn from agency as well as information asymmetry theories, the authors develop models that link debt maturity with corporate carbon risk and voluntary disclosure and examine data obtained from companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE), for the period 2011-2015.

The findings document that, other things being equal, debt maturity is significantly higher, both statistically and economically, for companies with lower carbon intensity (risk). In addition, high-quality carbon disclosure accentuates the positive association between debt maturity and the inverse of carbon intensity. The results are robust to alternative measures of corporate carbon risk and issues of endogeneity. The findings are consistent with the view that lenders in South Africa use debt maturity as a non-price mechanism to address borrower risk and grant lower carbon risk companies that voluntarily provide higher quality carbon disclosures an even higher access to longer maturity debts; JSE-listed companies could use voluntary carbon disclosure to ease their access to debt with longer maturity.

The findings of this study have important implications to borrowers, pressure groups, policymakers and other stakeholders.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to document evidence suggesting that lenders in South Africa use debt maturity as a non-price mechanism to address borrower risk.

This study investigates whether carbon media legitimacy is influenced by carbon performance and/or carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy in UK context.

To test this study's hypotheses, the authors employ Tobit regression analysis of 95 UK companies listed in FTSE350. The authors use balanced panel data (475 observations in total) to reduces the noise introduced by unit heterogeneity.

The authors find that while corporate carbon performance is not reflected in carbon media legitimacy, carbon media legitimacy is positively and significantly affected by voluntary carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality). Thus, voluntary carbon disclosure is shown to be an effective tool in legitimising corporate activities.

The results show a certain degree of naivety on the part of the media in assessing corporate carbon behaviour, since it values carbon disclosure (irrespective of its quality) more than carbon performance. Such media behaviour may hinder future improvement in carbon performance of firms.

This study's results indicate that the existing UK carbon disclosure policy does not address the heart of climate change and global warming. Thus, tougher regulations should be considered by policy-makers in relation to voluntary carbon disclosure in the UK.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether carbon media legitimacy is associated with both carbon performance and carbon disclosure using a direct measure of carbon media legitimacy, and to use the UK context when addressing this association. It also examines the effectiveness of quality of carbon disclosure as legitimation tool.

This study aims to examine whether good carbon performers disclose more carbon information overall than poor performers, and if yes, how firms select different types of carbon information to signal their genuine superior carbon performance.

The level of disclosure is measured based on content analysis of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reports. The study sample consists of 487 US companies that voluntarily participated in the CDP survey from 2011 to 2012. The authors use the t-test and multiple regression models for analyses.

The results consistently indicate that firms with better carbon performance disclose a greater amount of overall carbon information, supporting the signalling theory. In addition, in contrast to previous studies that merely consider the overall disclosure level, the authors also investigate disclosure of each major aspect of carbon activities. The results show that good carbon performers disclose more key carbon items, such as goods and services that avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, external verification and carbon accounting, to signal their true type.

This study has some limitations. The authors rely on CDP reports for analysis and focus on the largest companies in the USA. Caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other countries, smaller firms or voluntary carbon information disclosed in other communications channels.

Because carbon disclosure has already been moving from a voluntary to mandatory requirement in many jurisdictions, the format and content of CDP reports might be considered for a formal standalone GHG statement. Based on the results, the authors believe that there should be industry-specific disclosure guidelines, and more disclosure should be made at the project level.

In the context of climate change, this study provides support for the signalling theory by utilising the relationship between voluntary carbon disclosure and performance. The study also provides empirical evidence on how companies may use different types of carbon information to signal their underlying carbon performance.

This paper aims to explore the nature of voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies among industry sectors over a period after the introduction of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Act 2007 and before the introduction of the Australian ETS.

A GHG disclosure index is used to evaluate the levels of GHG disclosure in 2009 and 2011 annual reports.

This paper highlights that non-GHG-registered companies seem to improve their disclosure by incorporating more “behavioural management” actions rather than “symbolic” actions. The changing rationale of GHG disclosure is towards more serious GHG reduction strategies. Consistent with voluntary disclosure and signalling theories, companies having good news to tell disclose their superior GHG information to promote their superior environmental performance.

The findings should be useful for stakeholders who are interested in GHG disclosure strategies. Also, the content analysis of the annual reports provides some clarity in respect of the most common aspects of GHG disclosure by non-GHG-registered companies which is helpful in the evaluation of correspondence between carbon disclosure strategies and the objectives of carbon abatement.

Previous studies mostly investigate the differences in the type of GHG disclosure among companies subject to mandatory GHG regulations. However, this paper is the first study to examine the changing rationale in the nature of GHG disclosure of non-GHG-registered companies. While much of the prior research uses GHG-registered companies as the sample, no empirical study to date has considered non-GHG-registered companies that encompass 96 per cent of ASX listed companies.

This study examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on voluntary corporate carbon disclosure in Bangladeshi firms.

To investigate the association between corporate governance mechanisms and corporate carbon disclosures, this study employs ordinary least square (OLS) methods. To mitigate the potential endogeneity concerns, the authors also introduce firm fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE). Primarily, the study sample includes 250 firm-year observations over the period 2015–2019 for listed companies on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) in Bangladesh. Subsequently, corporate governance mechanisms that influence voluntary carbon disclosure were examined using both univariate and OLS models.

The findings of this study suggest that firms with a larger board size and more independent directors have a positive impact on the firm's intensity to disclose carbon-related information. However, no evidence has been found of the existence of an environmental committee, and the presence of female directors on the board tends to be associated with a higher level of voluntary corporate carbon disclosure.

The study offers necessary evidence of the determinants of corporate carbon disclosures, which will be useful for managers, senior executives, policymakers and regulatory bodies. To improve corporate governance practices and formulate separate sets of regulations and reporting criteria, disclosing extensive and holistic carbon-related information obligatory. Further, the outcomes of this study based on Bangladeshi firms can be comprehensive for other developing countries to take precautions to tackle the effect of global climate change.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of environmental performance on the environmental disclosure level.

Carbon disclosure leadership index score is considered as a proxy of carbon disclosure level, while greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a proxy of environmental performance. In addition, six control variables are used: return on assets, financial leverage, company’s size, CEO duality, board size and percentage of independent directors on board. The sample comprises 102 companies from a population of Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) companies over a five-year period, 2009-2013.

Results revealed that higher pollution levels in terms of GHG emissions affect negatively the dissemination of carbon disclosure information, suggesting a positive relationship between environmental performance and environmental disclosure level. In addition, companies with good environmental performance in relation to their average environmental performance disseminate more carbon information in their disclosures. Thus, the carbon disclosure level is indicative of environmental performance consistent with the voluntary disclosure theory.

The managerial behavior regarding the relation of environmental disclosure and environmental performance is explained. In addition, the findings should be of use to those investors interested in finding carbon emission information so that they assess investments and evaluate their current portfolios in terms of environmental sustainability.

It is intended to ascertain the reliability level of carbon disclosure regarding carbon emission information by incorporating the carbon disclosure leadership index score and GHG emissions.