Environmental sustainability disclosures in annual reports of ASX Industrials List companies

Abstract

Corporate environmental sustainability reporting (CESR) has been linked to the social license to operate, assisting companies in communicating their environmental performance, and through it, increasing transparency and maintaining stakeholder relationships. This study examines how topics related to environmental sustainability are disclosed in annual reports of companies from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) Industrials List. The investigation was performed by means of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of annual reports to identify relevant keyword occurrences. A keyword indicator list was created by combining four topics from the GRI G3 disclosure checklist/GRI Standards with other four relevant topics. Results revealed the differences in the number of environmental disclosures between individual companies and between industry groups. The existence of a relationship between the extent of CESR on one side and company size, sector, and share price on the other was confirmed. In addition to providing practical implications, this study also contributes to theory by addressing the issue of the limited applicability of GRI keywords as CESR indicators.