Non-Financial Information Disclosures and Environmental Protection—Evidence from Romania and Greece

Alin Artene,Alin-Constantin Dumitrescu,Oana Bogdan,Aura-Emanuela Domil,Ovidiu-Constantin Bunget

doi:10.3390/f11080814

Alin Artene, Alin-Constantin Dumitrescu + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/f11080814

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Abstract

Currently, sustainability and sustainable development are issues that concern society due to the high degree of pollution and the measures taken that, in many cases, do not prove their efficiency. Economic entities are aware that their involvement in the community has become necessary for the sustainable development of any business. The promotion of responsibility towards the environment is an important principle of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is becoming an obligation that can no longer be exempted. Our intention in this paper was to study the changes generated by the European Union (EU) Directive 2014/95 regarding the manner in which oil entities listed at the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) and the Athens Stock Exchange (ATHEX) between 2014 and 2018, report environment-related information. We also identified whether entities in fields that are known as polluting were more sensitive to environmental factors and if they tended to report more information compared to other business sectors. To achieve these objectives, we used qualitative and quantitative research. Namely, we analyzed the entities’ non-financial reports, to identify their social responsibility actions, and we tested if they were correlated with the environment protection and also with the 2014/95 European directive stipulations. For the entities operating in this polluting area, demonstrating transparency regarding the efforts and investments made to counteract the environmental impacts is important. Non-financial corporate reporting can be an opportunity to integrate sustainability into a company’s business practices and strategies to obtain benefits and to increase efficiency and, thus, to increase stakeholder confidence. The contribution of our study is to highlight the importance of non-financial information for the sustainable development of companies and the environment.

Highlights

Climate change, the reduction in the consumption of resources used in the context in which they are globally limited, the reuse of waste materials, and the innovations made to protect the planet are objectives of major interest to organizations working to ensure sustainable development in a protected environment
In research conducted to determine the factors influencing the level of compliance in Romanian companies as required by the European Directive in terms of how they present non-financial information, Popescu and Bant [13] validated, by mathematical modeling, the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the presentation of non-financial information and the field of activity of the reporting entity
Directive 2014/95 provides companies with non-binding recommendations to give them the opportunity to choose different reporting frameworks, provided that they are specified, in our paper we studied the changes generated by the European Union (EU) Directive 2014/95 regarding the way oil entities report information on environmental issues

Summary

Introduction

The reduction in the consumption of resources used in the context in which they are globally limited, the reuse of waste materials, and the innovations made to protect the planet are objectives of major interest to organizations working to ensure sustainable development in a protected environment. Directive 2014/95 lays the foundations for a new corporate reporting model that increases the level of transparency and trust by including the additional non-financial information needed to understand the impact of business activities, with sustainability being a defining element of the business strategy Through this reporting, investors can consider both the risks and opportunities of future investments, with access to information on the environmental, social, and sustainable development issues. In research conducted to determine the factors influencing the level of compliance in Romanian companies as required by the European Directive in terms of how they present non-financial information, Popescu and Bant [13] validated, by mathematical modeling, the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the presentation of non-financial information and the field of activity of the reporting entity. In the last part of the paper, we reflect discussions and conclusions, as well as the limits and future directions of the research

Materials and Methods

Results

Directive

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