Revisiting the relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: An empirical analysis
Revisiting the relation between environmental performance and environmental disclosure: An empirical analysis
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DOI：
10.1016/j.aos.2007.05.003
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发表时间：
2008-05-01
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Vasvari, Florin P.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clarkson, Peter M.;Li, Yue;Vasvari, Florin P.
以往的经验证据提供了混合的结果之间的关系，公司的环境业绩和环境披露的水平。我们重新审视这种关系，通过测试竞争的预测，从经济学为基础的和社会政治理论的自愿披露使用更严格的研究设计。特别是，我们改进了以往的文献，专注于纯粹的酌情环境披露，并制定了一个内容分析指数的基础上，全球报告倡议组织的可持续发展报告准则，以评估环境和社会责任报告中的酌情披露的程度。该指数比以往研究所用的指数更好地反映了与其保护环境承诺有关的公司披露情况。使用的样本191家公司从五个污染最严重的行业在美国，我们发现环境绩效和酌情环境披露水平之间存在正相关。这一结果与经济学披露理论的预测一致，但与社会政治理论预测的负关联不一致。尽管如此，我们表明，社会政治理论解释的数据模式（“合法化”），不能解释经济学披露理论。(c)2007爱思唯尔有限公司版权所有。
Previous empirical evidence provides mixed results on the relationship between corporate environmental performance and the level of environmental disclosures. We revisit this relation by testing competing predictions from economics based and socio-political theories of voluntary disclosure using a more rigorous research design. In particular, we improve on the prior literature by focusing on purely discretionary environmental disclosures and by developing a content analysis index based on the Global Reporting Initiative sustainability reporting guidelines to assess the extent of discretionary disclosures in environmental and social responsibility reports. This index better captures firm disclosures related to its commitment to protect the environment than the indices employed by prior studies. Using a sample of 191 firms from the five most polluting industries in the US, we find a positive association between environmental performance and the level of discretionary environmental disclosures. The result is consistent with the predictions of the economics disclosure theory but inconsistent with the negative association predicted by socio-political theories. Nevertheless, we show that socio-political theories explain patterns in the data ("legitimization") that cannot be explained by economics disclosure theories. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.