Environmental Disclosures and Impression Management

Abstract

A significant stream of social and environmental accounting research investigates the relationship between a corporation’s self-reported disclosures of its own social responsibility and environmental activities and third-party evaluations of that corporation’s actual social responsibility and environmental performance. Generally, researchers have utilized one of two theories to motivate and test this relationship. One theory—signaling or voluntary disclosure theory—argues that corporations with superior corporate social responsibility or environmental performance use disclosure to signal to interested parties a level of performance that poorer corporate performers cannot disclose. A second theory—legitimacy or impression management theory—argues that corporations use disclosures to manage impressions, often masking their actual social responsibility and environmental performance. In this chapter, the authors seek to comment on how DICTION has been and can be utilized to advance this stream of social and environmental accounting research.