Strategic tone management in ESG reports and ESG risk

Ruiqian Li, Haiyun Wu, Ma Zhong and Hao Lan

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2024, vol. 96, issue PA

Abstract: In this study, we investigate whether strategic tone management in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports can serve as an indicator of future ESG risk. Our baseline results reveal a positive association between abnormal positive tone in ESG reports and future ESG risk. The findings suggest that firms employ impression management strategy in their ESG reports to provide misleading information. Analyst coverage and media attention can mitigate this positive association. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive correlation is stronger for firms mandated to disclose ESG reports and those adhering to the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. Additional tests indicate that abnormal positive tone is positively associated only with future environmental risk, not with future social and governance risk. We observe this positive association exclusively in government-reported ESG risk, not in media-reported ESG risk. Our results offer valuable implications for mitigating the adverse impact of strategic tone management on corporate sustainability practices.

Keywords: Abnormal positive tone; Environmental, social, and governance risk; Impression management theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521924005507
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:finana:v:96:y:2024:i:pa:s1057521924005507

DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2024.103618

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Financial Analysis is currently edited by B.M. Lucey

More articles in International Review of Financial Analysis from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().