Exploring the relation between environmental disclosure and environmental performance in the Greek context

Abstract

Purpose: In the new economic and accounting era, environmental principles and issues are crucially considered. The relation of corporate environmental performance and environmental reporting has gained ongoing attention from a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including academics, and has been a matter of in-depth exploration and analysis, over the recent years, in various contexts. This dissertation project was conducted with the aim to define the relation between environmental disclosure and environmental performance in the Greek context, which constitutes a novel case study given that it is deprived of scientific evidence on this topic. Design/Methodology/Approach: This project employed an econometric model and a research design previously developed by Clarkson et al. (2008; 2011) and drew upon voluntary environmental disclosure theories in order to assess how both the level and the nature of corporate environmental disclosures of Greek firms relate to their underlying environmental performance. The selected sample was comprised of 15 companies from different sectors in Greece, including inter alia financial services, insurance, travel and tourism, telecommunication services, energy, integrated oil and gas, oil refining and marketing, retailing, conventional electricity, construction materials and cement, metal fabricating, fishing and farming. The year period of examination ranged from 2010 to 2016. Findings: This study embraced the socio-political theories’ perspective and concluded to a negative relation between the level of environmental disclosures and environmental performance for the sample of Greek firms. It, also, identified that Greek inferior environmental performers, i.e. companies with a higher pollution propensity, not only disclose more information as a means to legitimize their activities, but rely relatively more on hard, objective and verifiable disclosures, in order to communicate this information and position themselves in the Greek market, than Greek superior environmental performers do. Research implications: Results of this empirical endeavor underline the validity of concerns with regards to the reliability of corporate voluntary environmental disclosures. These findings could, also, inform Greek policy authorities and regulators to take actions in order to assure that more Greek companies in the future will successfully deal with their environmental footprint and maybe report more holistically on their environmental performance.