Why firms disclose: a textual analysis approach to biodiversity reporting
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2024-07-15
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nl
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Abstract
While reporting on biodiversity matters is a complicated and voluntary endeavour, a number of organisations disclose biodiversity information. The motivations behind this practice are under-researched in the field of environmental accounting. This thesis aims to expand current literature by studying the relationship between corporate environmental performance and the extent of corporate biodiversity disclosure in a sample of 46 Dutch firms listed on the AEX. Environmental performance is measured based on the environmental pillar score from the LSEG database. The extent of biodiversity disclosure in annual reports and supplements, such as separate CSR reports and reporting framework indices, is determined through a textual analysis approach that awards each observation an average score based on the presence of terms in different categories from the dictionary developed by Von Zedlitz (2024). This thesis adds to Von Zedlitz’s analysis by updating the dictionary to include terms from the latest GRI 101 standard. Furthermore, it includes a broad selection of control variables, thereby expanding prior research. This thesis finds results that are consistent with economics-based disclosure theories, such as discretionary disclosure theory, and suggests that organisations with ‘good’ environmental performance are likely to disclose more biodiversity information than organisations with ‘poor’ environmental performance.
Keywords: non-financial reporting, biodiversity disclosure, discretionary disclosure theory, legitimacy theory, textual analysis, environmental performance
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen