Sustainability reports: Differences between developing and developed countries

Abstract

Achieving sustainability is a major challenge faced by many societies. The increasing moral consciousness of stakeholders has put pressure on companies, forcing these companies to include long-term policies that reflect the regionally specific needs of stakeholders. Using a structural topic model, this study identified differences between developing and developed countries with respect to sustainability disclosures. Data were obtained from 2100 sustainability reports published in the United Nations Global Compact database for the year 2020. In global terms, these sustainability reports addressed three main topics: 1) human rights, 2) diversity, equity, and inclusion, and 3) sustainable production. Moreover, the sustainability reports from developing and developed countries incorporated different communication strategies. Based on the prevalence (rate of occurrence) of content, sustainability reports from developed countries predominantly communicated issues related to “sustainable production” and “supply chain emissions”, whereas sustainability reports from developing countries more frequently communicated issues related to “education” and “human rights".

Has building innovative provinces reduce environmental pollution?--evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

“…However, it is noteworthy that developed countries have placed too much emphasis on the role of technological innovation in innovation development and pollution reduction, while neglecting the importance of social and policy innovation (Barykin et al, 2022). Moreover, developed countries have tended to rely too heavily on market mechanisms and have lacked government and social involvement in pollution control (Kvasničková Stanislavská et al, 2023). Studies have found that the dominant role of governments in environmental governance is more pronounced in developing countries than in developed ones, and this government-led environmental governance model can better guarantee the implementation of environmental policies, resulting in more effective improvement of environmental quality (Spilker, 2012;.…”