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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on a substantial longitudinal and cross-sectional content analysis of environmental disclosures in annual reports for the top 250 UK companies in each year from 2007 to 2011 inclusive. Design/methodology/approach The method comprised a complex content analysis instrument capable of measuring volume and quality of disclosure. Meaning was also resolved by size, industry type and public visibility. With a total sample of 1150 company annual reports over five years, the sample has a large cross-sectional sample size with greater descriptive power than previous cross-sectional studies of environmental reporting. Findings Findings are expressed in terms of how environmental reporting responds to visibility, as proxied by size, industry and proximity to end user. Regressions are significant at the 1% level, suggesting strong associations between both the quality and quantity of disclosure with visibility and size. Smaller companies with higher levels of environmental disclosure are identified as highly visible (i.e. ‘High Street’) companies, supporting a political costs understanding of the motivations for environmental disclosure. Research limitations/implications This study supports prior finding that suggests that environmental reporting is responsive to structural vulnerability as conferred by size, industry or visibility. Findings are interpreted in terms of political costs, and observations suggest that companies with the highest political profiles, conferred by size or visibility, incur the costs of disclosure, possibly in partial response to political profile. Originality/value This paper reports on environmental reporting in the later period of the first decade of the twenty-first century and employs a substantially larger cross-sectional sample than previous studies, making possible a much more powerful and significant set of regressions than previous studies. This lends a greater reliability to the findings and provides a more robust presentation of findings.
Author(s): Al-Shaer H, Campbell D
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Unpublished
Journal:
Year: 2015
