Disentangling the determinants of the response and the publication decisions: The case of the Carbon Disclosure Project

Firms' decisions to prepare and to publish private information are key issues in disclosure research. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) provides a unique setting that allows us to examine the determinants of these two sequential disclosure decisions, first to respond to the CDP questionnaire and second to publish this response. We apply a sequential logit approach to analyze a panel dataset that contains 11,187 firm-year observations across 60 countries from 2006 to 2010. Our results indicate that the determinants of the response decision differ from the determinants of the publication decision. Specifically, the response decision is related to the available financial resources, the existence of a certified environmental management system and the publication of corporate social responsibility reports (preparation costs), whereas the publication decision is associated with the environmental performance and the nature of the competitive environment (proprietary costs). Furthermore, our findings suggest that the voluntary disclosure perspective dominates the legitimacy perspective, explaining the association between environmental performance and the publication decision. However, for carbon-intensive industries, our results indicate that both theoretical perspectives complement each other. Our analysis provides a better understanding of firms' response and publication decisions.