EPA scrutiny and voluntary environmental disclosures

Mark Zakota ()
Additional contact information
Mark Zakota: University of Maryland College Park

Review of Accounting Studies, 2025, vol. 30, issue 4, No 10, 3514-3557

Abstract: Abstract Market participants have called on the SEC to address the lack of disclosures about firms’ environmental impacts, investments, and exposures. However, the frictions that obstruct the flow of environmental information are not well understood. I shed light on these frictions by examining whether scrutiny by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricts the firm’s voluntary environmental disclosures in earnings conference calls. Consistent with the notion that EPA scrutiny gives rise to disclosure frictions, I find a negative relation between EPA scrutiny and the environmental disclosures of scrutinized firms. This negative relation is concentrated among firms without environmental expert directors, suggesting that environmental governance mitigates the chilling effect of EPA scrutiny. In terms of disclosure quality, I show that environmental disclosures include fewer quantitative details under EPA scrutiny. Collectively, these findings provide insights into the frictions that restrict the flow of environmental information to market participants, an important issue given the SEC’s efforts to improve current disclosure practices.

Keywords: Environmental disclosure; Voluntary disclosure; EPA enforcement; Disclosure costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 M14 M2 M4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11142-025-09901-8 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:spr:reaccs:v:30:y:2025:i:4:d:10.1007_s11142-025-09901-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/accounting/journal/11142

DOI: 10.1007/s11142-025-09901-8

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Accounting Studies is currently edited by Paul Fischer

More articles in Review of Accounting Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().