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This study aims to examine the timing of the disclosure of a firm’s environmental certification. In general, certifications comply with signaling and legitimacy theories and serve to bolster a firm’s reputation, financial performance and valuation, among other benefits. However, when a firm finds itself facing a reputational threat, it is unclear whether disclosing a recent certification would provide those same benefits or be perceived by investors as “greenwashing” or a disingenuous distraction from the threat.

This study is based on a case and survey the authors developed that is supported in methodology and approach by past academic work.

The findings suggest that in the short term, the disclosure of the certification benefits the firm regardless of the current reputational environment, good or bad. More specifically, investors view the certification as a benefit (rather than an attempt to distract) even when its disclosure was immediately proceeded by a reputational threat.

This study is limited by the population of survey respondents from which the authors collected data and their internal predispositions and biases.

This work is applicable to firms that have engaged in certifications or are considering such certifications as well as firms that provide certification services. The study is also relevant to stakeholders and consumers of information related to certifications.

This study is operationalized through the use of a case and survey the authors developed. The research question the authors attempt to answer is derived from a question raised in the literature. The authors are unaware of any other study that addresses this question.

This study aims to construct two environmental disclosure indices (EDI), one obtained from the mandatory reporting (annual report) and the other from the voluntary reporting (sustainability report), to compare their evolution. In addition, the authors developed and evaluated a conceptual model that aims to analyse if the two EDI are affected by industry, environmental certification, lucratively and corporate governance attributes. The legitimacy, signalling and voluntary disclosure theories are used to support the theoretical relationship between the company’s characteristics, corporate governance and environmental disclosure.

Using the content analysis technique, the authors have developed two indices to assess the level of environmental disclosure in the companies’ mandatory and voluntary reporting. In addition, to analyse the determinants of EDI, the authors applied the technique of multiple linear regression using panel data.

Based on Portuguese listed companies (Euronext-Lisbon), the results, from 2015 to 2017, exhibited an increase of 14.6% and 25.8% for the EDI obtained from the annual reports and for EDI obtained from the sustainability reporting, respectively. In addition, the results revealed that the environmental certification, lucratively, number of members on board and number and proportion of women of the board directors tend to affect the annual reporting EDI. Regarding the sustainability reporting EDI, the results showed that the environmental certification, lucratively and proportion of independent members of the board of directors have an impact on it.

The study focuses on quantitative rather than qualitative disclosures and it brings some insights to the theoretical field.

The results obtained can assist corporate decision-making processes regarding the improvement of environmental disclosure, both on the mandatory annual report and on voluntary sustainability reports.

This study brings new perspectives to this topical issue in accounting. Originally, this study is applied to Portuguese listed companies and it shows different trends and determinants of environmental disclosure when included in the annual reporting or sustainability reporting.

This paper aims to explore how the Italian wine industry discloses corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and quality certifications and the corresponding determinants via websites. The study also aims to investigate the relationship between CSR practices and financial performance. The information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements is also explored. Lastly, the paper investigates how the relationship between the size of wineries and CSR disclosure changes according to firms' geographic location.

This paper analyses CSR corporate communication via the websites of a sample of Italian wineries by adjusting the theoretical framework developed by Amran (2012) to the wine sector's peculiarities. Moreover, a cross-certification analysis and a moderation analysis were performed to fulfil the purpose of the research.

The analysis revealed the extensive use of CSR disclosure via websites. It was found that company size positively affects CSR disclosure and Quality Certification Disclosure (QCD), while geographic location slightly moderates the relationship between the two variables. In addition, a negative relationship between CSR disclosure and corporate financial performance and its reverse causality emerged. Moreover, for most wineries, information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements was observed.

The study's main limitation is that the search process was performed during lockdown. Therefore, the examined issues could change in the near future due to the shift in priorities that the COVID-19 pandemic is determining.

The results can help managers implement CSR disclosure and QCD practices to enhance stakeholder legitimacy and enable their companies to compete in strongly competitive international markets.

The paper represents the first study investigating online QCD and its consistency in the Italian wine sector.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.

This research considers a current problem statement: mandatory indication of palm oil among the list of ingredients (Regulation No. 1169/2011). The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of company choices about palm oil on consumer demand and company performance.

The data collection covers two years, 2013 and 2014. Financial data from the AIDA database are matched with information on palm oil certification and replacement. A panel data analysis is conducted to evaluate the impacts of certification and replacement on consumer demand and company performance.

Considering consumer demand, positive significances have been found in terms of both palm oil certification and replacement. With regard to performance, there are positive significances only for palm oil replacement.

The research is a first step in the study of palm oil phenomenon. Furthermore, the study takes into consideration only one specific industry that uses palm oil as an ingredient.

There is a consumer demand expression for these two kinds of disclosures, considered in terms of both environmental (certification) and health (replacement) issues. However, only palm oil replacement leads to improved performance.

This study considers the market effects of the labelling programme through a new empirical application related to the palm oil issue. Starting from palm oil concerns, a new way through which an increase in the provision of information to consumers is likely to impact the behaviour of companies is pointed out.

This study aims to identify factors that influence corporate environmental disclosure (CED) quality.

Using content analysis, an index and scoring scheme were applied to annual reports, stand-alone reports and corporate homepages of a sample of 116 oil and gas companies in 19 developing countries (DCs).

The results of this study reveal that out of 12 hypothesized variables, only 5 variables (company size, foreign ownership, profitability, leverage and membership of industry’s associations) are positively related to the CED quality.

The study has implications in enhancing the understanding of CED practices by oil and gas companies in DCs and the factors that influence the quality of such disclosure. Thus, the results of the study serve as input toward the development of improved regulations concerning CED for the oil and gas industry and provide guidelines to the regulators to make relevant decisions on social and environmental information items to be incorporated in the regulatory standards.

The current study attempts to fill the gaps in the literature by examining CED quality (rather than its quantity), concentrating on environmental disclosure made on the three main mediums of reporting. The study also extends previous research of CED by investigating some factors that have the potential to influence the content-quality of environmental disclosure, such as type of company (independent or constrain company) and industry’s association membership which have never been examined in the related literature.

In this chapter, the authors investigate the impact of the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information (in the form of ethical certification announcements) on firm value, measured as stock market reactions. When determining the potential value of CSR practices, investors evaluate disclosed information against firm-level characteristics. To cope with uncertainties related to voluntary disclosure and information asymmetries, investors also rely on heuristic evaluations of the congruity between firm- and institutional-level characteristics. The authors find that ethical certification information is especially valuable in opaque contexts with fewer firm reporting standards and poor protection mechanisms for investors. Overall, our findings suggest that in contexts where information asymmetries between insiders and outsiders are higher, validation of CSR activities by independent third-party institutions is more effective as a value creation mechanism.

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 provide a snapshot of voluntary sustainability assurance in New Zealand (NZ) in 2020. we assess the frequency of different assurance elements and discuss aspects of current practices that potentially contribute to the audit expectation gap. we also test whether the determinants of voluntary sustainability assurance in NZ are consistent with international findings.

For 118 companies listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in 2020, we hand collected data on whether sustainability information was assured, subject matter assured, assurance level, outcome, provider, disclosure of detailed procedures, standard referenced and criteria applied. we then examine the influences of voluntary sustainability assurance using both univariate and regression analysis.

Approximately 20% of listed companies that disclosed sustainability information provide a sustainability assurance report, indicating low levels of assurance compared to international practices. we note that the presence of different forms of assurance and certification, placement of sustainability information before financial statements and the associated audit report and mixture of assurance levels potentially contribute to the audit expectation gap. Further, voluntary sustainability assurance practices are diverse, and there are notable differences between Big Four accounting firms and other providers in terms of assurance level and standard referenced. Consistent with prior studies, we find size and industry classification as two main drivers of voluntary sustainability assurance.

We contribute NZ-specific insights to the sustainability assurance literature. The findings on voluntary sustainability assurance practices and reflection on the audit expectation gap are timely and relevant to the new climate-related disclosure mandate and pending assurance requirements.