Emerging ESG reporting of higher education institutions in China

Abstract

This paper investigates the ESG reporting practices of Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs). Based on Global Reporting Initiative's common reporting standards and the education sector-specific indicators proposed by earlier studies, we construct a disclosure framework of 112 indicators classified into environmental, social, governance, and educational dimensions. We manually collect all ESG-related information disclosed by 147 elite Chinese HEIs from various channels, including 8 standalone sustainability reports, around 600 annual reports, 139 charters, official websites, and official social media accounts, for the period 2020–2023. The results demonstrate how Chinese HEIs disclose different types of ESG information via different channels, with most of the information disclosed through channels other than standalone sustainability reports. Most Chinese HEIs do not adopt any specific disclosure standards but loosely follow the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in reporting. We further assess the quality of the disclosed information for each indicator and observe that, quality-wise, governance > educational > social > environmental, highlighting the necessity for Chinese HEIs to enhance environmental reporting. Next, we investigate the determinants of reporting quality and find that an HEI's number of faculty members is a more significant factor associated with its ESG reporting quality than other factors (i.e., number of students, funding, expenditure). Chinese HEIs are advised to report in a more balanced manner across the four dimensions in a standalone report using an education-oriented indicator-based framework instead of the current SDGs-based framework, to improve the completeness, materiality, and comparability of information.