Environmental Performance and the Quality of Corporate Environmental Reports

Marcus Wagner

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This article analyses and discusses whether there is an association between environmental performance and corporate environmental reporting in the paper and electricity industries in Germany and the United Kingdom and what the influence of environmental management accounting is on this link. After discussing environmental performance measurement and environmental reporting in general, the chapter introduces a measurement framework for both as the basis of an empirical study. Subsequently, the major empirical findings from a cross-sectional survey of corporate environmental reports and environmental statements as well as environmental performance indicators for air and water emissions in the above industries and countries are reported. These findings suggest that consistency between environmental performance and environmental reporting (operationalised empirically in terms of statistical correlation) is relatively rare, although (as is argued in the article) future credibility of companies will most likely depend on it. The findings also reveal that environmental performance tend to be linked to country location whereas quality of corporate environmental reports tend to be associated to sector membership. The chapter attempts an explanation of this, relating the findings to differences in environmental legislation in both countries. It concludes with implications for the use of environmental reports by third parties as well as a number of recommendations, especially concerning the need for more standardised indicators and reporting procedures.

Keywords: Environmental Performance; Electricity Sector; Environmental Report; Sulphur Dioxide Emission; Corporate Environmental Performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Pall M. Rikhardsson; Martin Bennett; Jan Jaap Bouma; Stefan Schaltegger. Implementing Environmental Management Accounting : Status and Challenges, Springer-Verlag, pp.105-122, 2005, Eco-efficiency in industry and science, 978-1-4020-3373-5. ⟨10.1007/1-4020-3373-7_6⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:journl:hal-00279444

DOI: 10.1007/1-4020-3373-7_6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().