A bibliometric review of corporate environmental disclosure literature

Abstract

PurposeThe study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research.Design/methodology/approachUsing a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020.FindingsThe authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries.Research limitations/implicationsThis study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature.Originality/valueThe authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature.

Theories underlying environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure: a systematic review of accounting studies

“…In particular, as also shown in Figure 7, the most used theoretical perspectives to support the studies in the sample are stakeholder theory (53 cases out of 142; 37.3%) and legitimacy theory (50 cases; 35.2%). This result is consistent with previous studies highlighting that both are mainstream theories in social and environmental accounting literature that offer plausible motivations for corporate sustainability disclosure (Spence et al, 2010;Guthrie et al, 2006;Deegan, 2019;Bilal et al, 2023;Rouf and Siddique, 2023). Additional major theories used across the sample papers are institutional theory (35 cases; 24.6%), agency theory (29 cases; 20.4%), and signaling theory (16 cases; 11.3%).…”

“…Consequently, a rising number of companies are pursuing ESG credentials, producing sustainability reports, and demonstrating the environmental and social impacts of their activities and their commitment to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) established by the 2015 United Nations Agenda (Adams and Abhayawansa, 2022). ESG information disclosure has thus gained momentum in corporate reporting, identifying a future research direction for sustainability reporting studies (Bilal et al, 2023).…”

“…Similarly, a previous study (Spence et al, 2010), which also focused on social and environmental reporting literature, identified both legitimacy and stakeholder theories as landmarks for context. Indeed, accounting studies traditionally adopted these two closely related perspectives to explain or justify voluntary non-financial reporting and environmental and CSR disclosures (Guthrie et al, 2006;Bilal et al, 2023;Tsang et al, 2023) under a social contract (Deegan, 2019). Furthermore, Rouf and Siddique (2023) reviewed theories applied in corporate voluntary disclosure literature up to 2021, finding that legitimacy, agency, and stakeholder theories were the most used.…”

ESG Reporting: Environmental Dimension Disclosures by Large Energy Sector Companies in India

“…Of the three dimensions of ESG disclosures, it has been noted that Environmental reporting quality faces many challenges in providing accurate and transparent information (Kolk, 2008). A bibliometric review of Corporate Environmental Disclosures (CED) based on 565 articles published in 215 academic journals during 1982 -2020 identifies "three core research streams: 'legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures'; 'the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability'; and 'integrating ESG practices into the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines'" (Bilal et. al., 2023).…”

“…Sector-specific studies of EDD particularly in the context of emerging economies are very few though some research has been undertaken in recent years (Kriplani & Bhanawat, 2021;Bilal et. al., 2023;Narolia & Sapra, 2023).…”