Regulatory impact on voluntary climate change-related reporting by Australian government-owned corporations

Autor: Luckmika Perera, Christine Jubb, Zihan Liu, Subhash Abhayawansa
Rok vydání: 2017
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Zdroj: Financial Accountability & Management. 33:264-283
ISSN: 0267-4424
DOI: 10.1111/faam.12124
Popis: This paper concerns voluntary climate change–related reporting of government-owned corporations (GOCs). We investigate whether the Australian National Gresenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS), a regulation stipulating the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions to government, subsequently made publicly available on a Website, has a positive impact on the voluntary disclosure of climate change–related information not required by the regulation. We find that implementation of NGERS has a positive effect on voluntary climate change-related disclosures by GOCs. Hence, mandating disclosure of organisations’ negative environmental performance, such as greenhouse gas emissions, can influence voluntary disclosures of a broad range of related information particularly in organisations that are not subject to capital markets incentives. However, upon later but concurrent implementation of a Carbon Tax after a highly partisan and divisive political debate, climate change–related disclosures by GOCs reduce, consistent with the de Villiers and van Staden (2006) argument that when disclosures might increase awareness of sensitive issues, avoidance of attention to the issue might be the best strategy to retain legitimacy.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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