Website disclosure of environmental compliance management\u2014the case of European production companies

Heiko Thimm,Karsten Boye Rasmussen

doi:10.1007/s13412-020-00643-4

Abstract

Companies are expected to comply with environmental laws and regulations. They also face increasing stakeholder interest in information about environmental compliance management efforts. Corporate websites serve today’s enterprises as an important medium for voluntary environmental disclosure. However, relatively little research has addressed the topic of environmental compliance management. This empirical study explores current practices of website disclosure of environmental compliance management. Data were collected through a randomly selected sample of 154 European production companies in two groups of medium-sized and very large companies. Environmental management issues concerning the functionalities and disclosure subjects observed on the company websites were recorded. The analyses revealed that in general, corporate websites contain little information about environmental management and environmental compliance management, and large companies disclose more than small companies. The results also indicate that the disclosure practices of some countries deviate remarkably from those of other countries in the sample.

Highlights

The corporate website serves as a relatively inexpensive vehicle for offering up-to-date financial and nonfinancial information to stakeholders and the general public (Jones and Alabaster 1999; Jose and Lee 2007; Qian et al 2018; Tukker et al 2009)
A comprehensive empirical study of the website disclosure of environmental management and environmental compliance management at European production companies is presented in this article
The descriptive results confirm the initial assumption that companies in general refrain from a comprehensive disclosure of environmental compliance management

Summary

Introduction

The corporate website serves as a relatively inexpensive vehicle for offering up-to-date financial and nonfinancial information to stakeholders and the general public (Jones and Alabaster 1999; Jose and Lee 2007; Qian et al 2018; Tukker et al 2009). The extent of CECM disclosure, differences in CECM disclosure across countries and industries, and the determining factors are still largely unknown Evidence of this knowledge gap is described in a recent literature study (Thimm and Rasmussen 2020). The study explores the extent of the disclosure of environmental management information and CECM information by small and large companies in European production industries. Principles for the new fields addressed in the study have been adopted from research areas such as research on the dialogical communication features of websites (Atli 2019; Isenmann and Lenz 2001; Kent and Taylor 1998) and work on index construction (Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer 2001) It is the goal of the descriptive data analyses to reveal the current CECM disclosure practices of the European production sector. Conclusions and an outlook are presented in the sixth section

Literature overview

Research methodology

Findings

Conclusions