Level Of Environmental Information Disclosure Research Articles

Environmental disclosure effects on returns and market value

This paper analyzes whether the environmental information disclosure level practiced by firms listed on the Brazilian Stock Market affects their profitability and value. The results show some disclosure by most of the sample firms, and significant differences in characteristics between firms that disclose and those that do not disclose environmental information. The paper contributes to the extant social responsibility and environmental disclosure literature by analyzing annual reports and standardized financial statements as a source of evidence, but especially for analyzing the relationship between the level of disclosure of environmental information and its lack of reflection on the profitability and value of firms. Results suggest the importance of both legitimacy theory and proprietary costs theory, each explaining part of the decision process regarding the disclosure of environmental information. Our results also demonstrate that environmental disclosure positively affects the value of publicly traded Brazilian companies.

Does Internal Control Contribute to a Firm’s Green Information Disclosure? Evidence from China

The literature shows that a firm’s environmental information disclosure is affected by internal and external factors. However, it is unclear whether internal control positively impacts a firm’s green information disclosure. We collected data from the period 2010–2016 from either environmental reports or the environmental section of social responsibility reports of A-share listed companies in the heaviest polluting industries of the Chinese capital market, 1603 companies in total, and established an evaluation index for measuring firm greenness. Our research indicates that the level of internal control was positively correlated to the firm’s greenness level, and deficiencies in internal control were negatively correlated to the firm’s greenness level, indicating that high-quality internal control improves company green information disclosure. Pertaining to property rights, the internal control of state-owned enterprises had a significant effect on improving the level of environmental information disclosure. Among five elements of internal control, the internal environment, information and communication elements had a significant positive impact on firm greenness. Compared with samples with uncorrected major deficiencies in internal control, rectified companies’ environmental information disclosure was greener. These findings provide empirical evidence for a comprehensive understanding of the non-financial reporting goals of firm internal control, and will become a useful reference for firm green governance decision-making.

The Determinants of Environmental Information Disclosure in Vietnam Listed Companies

Environmental pollution and climate change in Vietnam are now becoming a major concern. This situation is increasing the pressure on the companies to improve their social responsibility in production and business activities and disclose the environmental information to meet the requirements of stakeholders. This study investigates the internal and external factors of the company that affects the environmental information disclosure of listed companies on the Vietnam stock market as business sector, firm size, corporate manager perceptions, profitability, financial leverage, community pressure, pressures from stakeholders, government pressure influencing environmental information disclosure. Analytical data collected through the survey of 120 listed companies on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE). By testing Cronbach's Alpha, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and logistic regression analysis, the results of the study show that the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam depends heavily on government regulations, followed by the pressure from stakeholders, community pressure, views of business managers, companies size, business sector, and particularly profitability and financial leverage factors that have a negative relationship with environmental information disclosure.

Environmental Information Disclosure and Auditing of Listed Companies in Heavy Pollution Industries

Concentrating on environmental issues in financial statement auditing is the main way for auditors to fulfill their environmental protection responsibilities. By studying the impact of environmental information disclosure on audit fees and audit opinions, we can infer how closely the auditors focus on environmental matters to some extent. In this paper, listed companies with serious pollution in A-share market in China from 2014 to 2019 are selected as research samples to explore the correlation among environmental-related information disclosure, audit fees and audit opinions. Through empirical analysis, it is found that the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in heavily polluted industries is positively correlated with the audit fees, and negatively correlated with the publication of non-standard audit opinions.

Assessing the level of environmental information disclosure by listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam

The environmental information disclosure of enterprises listed on Vietnam’s stock market has been mandated by the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam according to Circular No. 155/2015/TT_BTC. Therefore, enterprises need to be responsible for announcing and interpreting financial and non-financial information about the environment to meet the needs of the Government and stakeholders. However, the level of environmental information disclosure depends on their business, company characteristics, compliance of the board of management, etc. This paper investigates and assesses the level of environmental information disclosure of the listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam. The study was conducted with 170 listed companies on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) and Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) through descriptive statistics and value testing methods and an in-depth interview. The research results have shown that in Vietnam, the level of enterprises announcing environmental information disclosure is still low. For example, materials and construction industry, food and beverage industry have less than 55% of enterprise disclosing environmental information. At the same time, the enterprises from environmentally sensitive sectors such as materials and construction, electricity, petroleum, gas, chemicals, etc., have more environmental information disclosure than other industries, and the environmental information published only focuses on the environmental debt, the amount of resources consumed, the number of environmental violations, environmental policies and objectives, etc.

The impact of corporate social responsibility on the cost of equity: an analysis of Vietnamese listed companies

A number of studies in environmental disclosure have suggested that corporates accountable for environmental responsibility practice have lower cost of capital. However, this relationship has not yet been discovered in Vietnam. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between environmental disclosure and the equity cost of 115 non-financial companies listed on Vietnamese stock market from 2014 to 2017 with 460 observations. This study uses the panel data regression model (the fixed effects model (FEM) and the random effects model (REM)) to assess the impact of environmental disclosure on the equity cost of listed companies in Vietnam. Content analysis method according to GRI guidelines is used to measure the level of the environmental responsibility practice and Easton’s model (2004) is used to estimate firms’ ex ante cost of equity. The research results show that the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies in Vietnam is not high and there is a negative relationship with statistical significance between the environmental disclosure and cost of equity of listed companies in Vietnam. The findings suggest that environmental practice can be profitable and beneficial to Vietnamese listed companies. Therefore, companies in Vietnam need to change their awareness of social and environmental responsibility practices. This study also shows that the suitable model for listed companies in Vietnam is the FEM.

Beyond symbolic and substantive: Strategic disclosure of corporate environmental information in China

AbstractUnder increasing regulatory pressure to disclose environmental impacts, corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) is becoming more prevalent. However, the motives for EID and disclosure approaches (i.e., symbolic or substantive) remain controversial. Using a sample of data for 742 listed manufacturing firms in China across 3 years, we provide evidence to show that the level of EID is significantly positively associated with a firm's advertising intensity and that firms in moderately competitive industries have a higher propensity for adopting an EID‐based differentiated strategy than firms in stronger or weaker competitive industries. We also find that firms that are more sensitive to environmental issues strategically understate their environmental impact when directly facing consumers. Our results suggest that the implementation of corporate EID is strategic and that firms have strong market motives, even under regulatory pressure to demonstrate legitimacy. We discuss this study's contributions to research on EID theory and implications for strategic EID management.

DISCLOSURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION FOR THE EXAMPLE OF BULGARIAN THERMAL POWER PLANTS

Growing pressure on businesses to disclose environmental information also implies an increase in the volume of such disclosures. This article is an attempt to present the guidelines and to assess the levels of environmental information disclosure in Bulgaria.Companies, which were identified as the most responsible for air pollution, are thermal power plants. We have studied only these, which produce electricity. A checklist, containing 17 environmental performance assessment criteria, was developed and was completed based on the information, disclosed in the companies' annual financial statements, their activity reports and their websites. Based on a comparative analysis of the quantitative and qualitative information, disclosed by examined companies, we discovered that most companies disclose quantity environmental information, largely neglecting qualitive information. Taking into account the character of their activity, they should disclose more environmental information, especially qualitive information.

The effect of environmental information disclosure and energy product type on the cost of debt: Evidence from energy firms in China

This study examines the effect of environmental information disclosure (EID) and energy product type on Chinese energy firms' cost of debt (COD). Using a sample of Chinese energy firms over 2008–2014, we find a significant negative association between EID and the COD. We also observe a significant negative association between several energy product types (hydro power, oil, solar and wind) and energy firms' COD. Finally, we analyze the joint effect of EID and energy product type on energy firms' COD and find that when gas, thermal power generation, and hydro firms increase their level of EID their COD increases, but when solar and wind power firms increase their level of EID, this decreases their COD. Our findings are robust to several endogeneity checks.

Study on the Relevance of Environmental Information Disclosure and Enterprise Value: An Empirical Study in Pharmaceutical Industry

This paper selects 130 listed companies in pharmaceutical industry from 2014 to 2016 as samples to study the relationship between environmental information disclosure and enterprise value, and further analyzes the impact of regional differences on environmental information disclosure and enterprise value. High levels of environmental information disclosure (EID) have become pressing issues due to environmental protection around the world. The regional differences are introduced as the adjustment variable by the per capita GDP of each province. The results of the empirical analysis showed: the level of environmental information disclosure in pharmaceutical industry is increasing year by year, but the overall disclosure level is pretty low. The environmental information disclosure has a positive impact on enterprise value. In regions with high level of economic development, the positive correlation between environmental information disclosure and enterprise value is more significant.

Institutional Pressures on Environmental Information Disclosure by Companies in BRICS Countries

We intended to identify the influence of institutional pressures such as legal, regulatory and social charges in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS countries) on level of environmental information disclosure of local electricity companies. We used content analysis to analyze the annual and sustainability reports of 90 companies of BRICS countries from electricity sector and used ANOVA, t-test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Tukey's post-hoc test and regression tree to analyze the data according to the Institutional Theory. We concluded that companies with the highest level of disclosure are those that are part of sustainability indexes. This result highlights the mimetic isomorphism and the influence of cultural pressures. Companies of the sample that present the lowest level of disclosure are those based in Common Law or mixed legal system countries and they are not part of any sustainability indexes. Among the companies studied, Brazilian and Russian companies presented a higher level of environmental disclosure than Chinese and Indian ones. These findings highlights the importance of the role that institutions such as stock exchanges and their sustainability indexes play on influencing the disclosure of environmental information, having a bigger influence on disclosure than legal requirements and external verification of reports.

Different extent of environmental information disclosure across chinese cities: Contributing factors and correlation with local pollution

Abstract This paper uses the dataset of Pollution Information Transparency Index covering 113 Chinese cities and the period of 2008–2011 to find out what contributes to different levels of environmental information disclosure across Chinese cities and the correlation between cities’ Pollution Information Transparency Indexes and local pollution. We find that cities whose mayors have longer tenures and PhD degrees are likely to release more environmental information. In addition, the higher the number of internet users and income per capita, the closer a city is to Hong Kong, and the lower a city’s unemployment rate, the greater the level of environmental disclosure is. An efficient local legal system is also found to facilitate information disclosure. We also find that in most cases, high Pollution Information Transparency Indexes are associated with lower pollutant levels and more pollution-control investment, suggesting the effectiveness of China’s environmental disclosure in pollution control. Community pressure for a better environment is shown to reinforce the role of environmental disclosure in pollution reduction. We find no evidence that environmental disclosure improves the efficacy of traditional environmental regulation in pollution control. Nevertheless, different aspects of environmental disclosure vary a lot in their effectiveness in pollution reduction and the results here indicate that inducing cities to respond to public information requests is perhaps the most effective method of pollution control in China.

The Value of Climate Change Reporting of Firms

Existing literature has not yet provided fully conclusive evidence on the relationship between the level of companies' carbon disclosure, as one type of environmental information disclosure, and their financial performance. This paper studies carbon disclosure through the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and observes its effect on financial performance by means of a test double carried out in the Spanish financial market. Market response to the publication of CDP reports was monitored through an event study and studying how the CDP score impacts companies' share price using a model based in Ohlson, (1995) and developing a panel data analysis. The results confirm that the market responds to the disclosure of environmental information with an incremental effect on financial performance, which furthermore corroborates the fact that companies with better environmental performance have higher levels of environmental information disclosure, as predicted by the voluntary disclosure theory.

Will Corporate Political Connection Influence the Environmental Information Disclosure Level? Based on the Panel Data of A-Shares from Listed Companies in Shanghai Stock Market

The purpose of the Chinese Environmental Information Disclosure System is to protect the environment through public participation and public opinion. This paper uses data from listed Chinese companies in heavily polluted industries from 2008 to 2013 to examine the influence that corporate political connection has on corporate environmental information disclosure (CEID) level. The results show that firstly, while environmental disclosure level has improved over time, negative information that reflects the real status of environmental management has also been concealed. Secondly, although corporate political connection can influence companies to more actively disclose environmental information, it can also mask political rent-seeking in the guise of protecting the environment. This is especially prevalent in state-owned enterprises where political connection has a significant positive impact on CEID in the eastern and western parts of China. If political connections influence CEID, it will be difficult to improve the quality of environmental disclosure and provide useful information for decision makers. There is an urgent need to standardize and strictly regulate listed companies’ system for environmental information disclosure.

Towards corporate environmental information disclosure: an empirical study in China

High levels of corporate environmental information disclosure (EID) have become pressing issues due to environmental protection around the world. Corporate EID refers to disclose their information on activities related to the natural environment, environmental protection and use of resource. Emerging economies in developing countries seem to face a formidable task for promoting corporate EID. Based on data of corporate EID for 871 listed manufacturing companies in China, this paper examines the status of corporate EID. The significant difference of selectively disclosing their environmental information for the listed companies is investigated. The relations among the level of EID, industrial sector, company size, and company ownership are also explored. Surprisingly, the result reveals the inverse relationship between the marketization level and corporate EID.