The role of audit committees in social responsibility and environmental disclosures: evidence from Chinese energy sector

Junhui Wang and Jerry Sun ()
Additional contact information
Junhui Wang: China University of Petroleum
Jerry Sun: University of Windsor

International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, 2022, vol. 19, issue 1, No 7, 113-128

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the role of Chinese audit committees in social responsibility and environmental disclosures. We examine whether audit committee characteristics are related to the disclosures. By using a balanced panel dataset of Chinese energy firms and firm fixed-effects regressions, we find that audit committees’ female representation is positively associated with the likelihood of issuing social responsibility reports and the level of environmental disclosures. Nevertheless, there is no consistent evidence that some conventional measures of audit committee effectiveness including audit committee independence and financial expertise can positively affect the disclosures. The findings suggest that female audit committee members are more effective in enhancing the disclosures than their male counterparts, which may pose a demand for the presence of more female directors on Chinese audit committees. Meanwhile, there is room for Chinese audit committee members to extend their oversight role. This study enriches the research on the role of audit committees in social responsibility and environmental disclosures, which has been little addressed in the literature.

Keywords: Audit committees; Directors; Social responsibility; Environmental disclosures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G34 M14 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41310-021-00131-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:pal:ijodag:v:19:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1057_s41310-021-00131-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41310

DOI: 10.1057/s41310-021-00131-3

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Disclosure and Governance is currently edited by Michael Alles

More articles in International Journal of Disclosure and Governance from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().