Factors determining online sustainability reporting by local governments

Abstract

Although international organizations and prior literature have recognized the importance of sustainability reporting for governments nowadays, some studies have revealed that this is an issue that has received little attention and thus needs further investigation. This article studies the publication of information on sustainability issues by local governments, analysing the relationship between diverse levels of sustainability information disclosure and some socioeconomic, financial and population variables. Based on the increased use of the Internet by governments, the methodology applied in this study is to analyse the websites of 55 major towns and cities in Spain, seeking 61 items that are recommended in the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. By applying multiple linear regression analysis, we analysed the influence of 13 factors on the sustainability reporting provided by these municipal authorities. The results show that social information is the most widespread, and that the dependent population has a positive impact on the sustainability disclosures. The major opportunities to improve sustainability practices lie in improving the disclosure of economic and environmental information, through the publication of formal sustainability reports and the enhanced coordination of information published individually by different departments. Points for practitioners The results obtained highlight several issues of particular interest for managers. On the one hand, the public sector financial crisis has heightened the need to legitimize government actions. Moreover, the incidence of the variable ‘dependent population’ on the disclosure of sustainability information suggests that there is an important relation between the population structure and such disclosure, highlighting the need to consider the age of the population and its evolution over time as the basis for creating specific reports on sustainability. The public demand for information on sustainability does not depend on the level of taxes paid. Finally, local governments are not motivated by their level of financial autonomy with respect to information about their commitments on economic sustainability.

Enhancing Sustainability Transparency in Local Governments—An Empirical Research in Europe

“…Other papers have considered the information available in a single country. Thus, studies have evaluated the online provision of information about large Spanish cities and have examined relevant economic and political factors [13,59,60]. Other studies have analysed the information disclosure on sustainability by 33 Anglo-Saxon and Nordic local governments [21], and that provided by 62 local governments in Anglo-Saxon and Southern European countries, considering the influence of certain socio-economic variables [24].…”

“…In some previous studies of transparency about sustainability, the study sample is composed of LGs within a single country [59,73], while, in others, two different administrative cultures are represented [21,24]. Another limitation observed in previous research is that the issue has been presented in a purely descriptive manner, without considering the possible influence of other factors [23].…”

Promoting Sustainability Transparency in European Local Governments: An Empirical Analysis Based on Administrative Cultures

“…These local governments are distributed among the administrative cultures as follows: 25 Anglo-Saxon governments, 26 Southern European governments and 21 Nordic governments. As in prior studies on local government transparency [16,20,33], we have chosen municipalities with large populations for the following reasons: (a) EU [7] recommends studying sustainability in larger municipalities, which are particularly subject to the negative effects of an aging population and to high levels of debt and deficit; (b) larger municipalities provide a wider range of services; however, at the same time, the provided services tend to be more homogenous; (c) these municipalities have greater access to new technologies and make greater use of them; (d) the administrative staff typically has a greater degree of specialisation and professionalism than that of smaller municipalities; (e) these municipalities have a larger number and variety of stakeholders; (f) the larger volume of managed resources, which suggests that more investments should be dedicated to ensuring sustainability.…”

“…Thus, and in line with previous studies on government information [19,20,47], in our empirical study we measure transparency according to the volume of online information published on the websites of the 72 local governments of our sample, including all departments.…”

“…However, despite the interest in studying online transparency regarding sustainability of public services, few studies have focused on the online dissemination of this type of information [12,19,20]. Previous studies have proposed the usefulness of comparing sustainability transparency practices across different contexts given that the administrative cultures of different countries influence the level of government openness toward citizens and their accountability practices [21].…”