Stakeholder Relevance for Reporting: Explanatory Factors of Carbon Disclosure
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Although stakeholder theory is widely accepted in environmental disclosure research, empirical evidence about the role of stakeholders in firms’ disclosure is still scarce. The authors address this issue for a setting of carbon disclosure. Our international sample comprises the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Global 500, S&P 500, and FTSE 350 reports from 2008 to 2011, resulting in a total of 1,120 firms with 3,631 firm-year observations. The authors apply Tobit regressions to analyze the relationship between carbon disclosure and the relevance of the following stakeholder groups: government, general public, media, employees, and customers. Our results confirm that in addition to carbon performance, all stakeholders are associated with carbon disclosure. Only one stakeholder group (government) acts as a moderator for the relationship between carbon performance and carbon disclosure. Furthermore, the authors find that carbon performance but not the affiliation to a carbon-intensive industry acts as a moderator between stakeholder relevance and carbon disclosure.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 361-397 |
Number of pages | 37 |
Journal | Business and Society |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 3 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2016 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- carbon disclosure, carbon performance, climate change, corporate social responsibility (CSR), stakeholder theory, sustainability reporting