Corporate governance and voluntary sustainability practices in Islamic bank: A study in the MENA region

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of selected governance characteristics on the level of environmental disclosure in Islamic banks within the MENA zone. This study used a sample of 40 Islamic banks as part of a new data set, namely the data collected from the annual reports. Environmental disclosure is developed to measure the level of environmental information. We measure the environmental disclosure by both the energy disclosure items and the natural environment disclosure item provided by the annual reports. Multiple linear regression analyzes were used to verify the effect of a bank’s governance characteristics on the level of environmental disclosure. This study may contribute to the existing literature by providing insights from countries with an emerging economy and providing updated documentary and empirical evidence concerning the association between the characteristics of governance and the level of environmental disclosure of Islamic banks within the MENA zone