Greenhouse Gas Disclosure: Evidence from Private Firms

Aline Grahn ()
Additional contact information
Aline Grahn: Freie Universität Berlin

Journal of Business Ethics, 2025, vol. 197, issue 1, No 10, 177-194

Abstract: Abstract Existing literature on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure has paid little attention to private firms, despite the fact that this type of firm is responsible for significant GHG emissions. This study empirically analyzes the GHG disclosure of German private firms. The results suggest that more pronounced information asymmetries due to a more dispersed ownership structure and/or multiple bank relationships are associated with more extensive GHG disclosure. This aligns with arguments from agency and stakeholder theory. While this result is not new for public firms, it is for private firms. Given the specific characteristics of this type of firms (no separation of ownership and control, private communication channels, close bank–borrower relationships), it is not a straightforward assumption that observations from public firms can be transferred to private firms one-to-one. Moreover, higher levels of actual GHG emissions are also associated with more GHG disclosure, indicating that legitimacy theory arguments hold for private firms as well.

Keywords: GHG disclosure; Environmental disclosure; Private firms; GHG emissions; EU ETS; ESG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M14 M41 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-024-05697-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:jbuset:v:197:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-024-05697-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-024-05697-w

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().