Empirical Analysis of Non-Financial Reporting by Spanish Companies

Laura Sierra-Garcia, Maria Antonia Garcia-Benau and Helena Maria Bollas-Araya
Additional contact information
Laura Sierra-Garcia: Faculty of Business, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 41013 Sevilla, Spain
Maria Antonia Garcia-Benau: Faculty of Economics, Universitat de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Helena Maria Bollas-Araya: Faculty of Business Administration and Management, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain

Administrative Sciences, 2018, vol. 8, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Spain is one of the European countries that is the most strongly committed to the presentation of non-financial information. In 2017, Spain adapted its legislation to Directive 2014/95/EU through Royal Decree-Law 18/2017, which required Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to provide information in accordance with the requirements of the European Union (EU) Directive, with respect to financial years from 1 January 2017. Our research is focused on Spanish IBEX-35 1 listed companies and seeks to identify current trends in non-financial reporting. To our knowledge, the present paper is the first study to examine the impact made in Spain by the legislative changes. Our aim is to analyse the publication of non-financial information by Spanish listed companies whose first reports in this regard were made from early 2018. Specifically, we consider the impact of this information disclosure, determining whether the companies in question restrict themselves to meeting regulatory requirements or whether they go further and voluntarily supply additional information. Our findings show that the level of regulatory compliance produced is associated with the business sector in which the company operates. We also show that the highest rates of disclosure of non-financial information correspond to companies that provide this information in the sustainability report.

Keywords: non-financial information; non-financial report; sustainability report; Directive 2014/95/EU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/8/3/29/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/8/3/29/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jadmsc:v:8:y:2018:i:3:p:29-:d:156065

Access Statistics for this article

Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Nancy Ma

More articles in Administrative Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().