A comprehensive comparison of corporate environmental reporting and responsiveness

This research is motivated by an interest in determining if there is an association between companies that have been identified as environmentally responsive according to an independent ranking and the quality and extent of their disclosures about their environmental impacts. We use the proactive approach to achieving legitimacy to develop the expectation that legitimacy theory can be used to predict a positive association between environmental responsiveness and disclosure. Using all forms of environmental reporting (both hard copy and website), we comprehensively assess the quality and extent of what is being reported and then match this assessment with an independent assessment of each company's environmental responsiveness. We find significant positive correlations between the independent ranking and our rankings based on the quality and extent of disclosure. This suggests that companies’ environmental disclosures reflect their environmental responsiveness and supports the expectations we developed in terms of legitimacy theory.