英国大型公司的自愿性环境信息披露【外文翻译】

外文文献翻译

原文：

Voluntary Environmental Disclosures

by Large UK Companies

2. INFLUENCES ON VOLUNTARY ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE DECISIONS

V oluntary disclosures are attempts to remove informational asymmetries between the firm and external agents, primarily agents in the investment community. As recent events in the arena of corporate social responsibility have demonstrated, ethical, social, and environmental aspects of business activities are associated with significant financial consequences. Given the possibility of hidden corporate attributes, investors may prefer not to invest in companies that fail to volunteer information concerning their environmental performance. The point is that, absent disclosure, ‘investors will assume the worst and will bid down its st ock price’ (Cormier and Magnan, 2003, p.

47).In that sense, voluntary environmental disclosures may be viewed as attempts by firms to reduce the information risks (and their associated costs) faced by potential and actual investors.

However, not all firms choose to make such disclosures, and those disclosures that are made are of varying quality. This is because disclosure is costly in two respects: the costs of measuring, verifying, collating and publishing environmental information; the loss of strategic discretion associated with making public commitments to verifiable future actions and/or performance (Verrecchia, 1983; Li et al., 1997; Cormier and Magnan, 1999; and Skinner, 1994). Corporate decisions concerning the provision and quality of voluntary environmental disclosures are therefore expected to hinge upon a range of firm and industry characteristics that influence the relative costs and benefits of disclosing such information (Cormier and Magnan, 1999 and 2003; and Li et al.,1997). The existing literature demonstrates that these costs and benefits are associated with pressure from external agents such as legislators, regulators,

community and environmental lobby groups, consumers and socially responsible investors (Roberts,1992; Li et al., 1997; Sinclair-Desgagne and Gozlan, 2003; and Willis, 2003), the firm’s vulnerability to those pressures as captured by its size and media visibility (Cormier and Magnan,2003; Patten,2002b; and Roberts, 1992), its environmental performance(Patten,2002; and Ullmann,1985), its ownership and governance structures (Cormier and Magnan,2003; Roberts, 1992; and Cullen and Christopher, 2002), and resource availability (Cormier and Magnan,2003; and Roberts, 1992). We will discuss each of these factors in turn.

(i) The Nature of Business Activities

The existing environmental disclosure literature identifies a number of legislative, regulatory and institutional sources of pressure on the firm to make such disclosures, and notes that industries differ in respect of their inherent environmental impact(Halme and Huse, 1996), the visibility of environmental issues and the degree and type of regulatory intervention. Industries with a high environmental impact are characterised by their association with particularly visible environmental issues (Bowen,2000) such as global warming and the risk of oil spills. The activities of firms in these industries are subject to intense scrutiny from environmental pressure groups, and recent studies emphasize the visibility of environmental issues in determining environmental responsiveness (Bowen,2000; and Dutton et al., 1990). The association of the organization with environmental issues, in the eyes of external groups including investors and regulators, may stimulate environmental disclosure because of the enhanced urgency of visible issues. This promotes a need to remove informational asymmetries between the firmand external agents in order to reassure the latter regarding the activities of the firm (Dutton et al., 1990). Empirical study has associated high environmental impact with the metals, resources, paper and pulp, power generation,water, and chemicals sectors (Bowen, 2000; Sharma, 1997; and Hoffman, 1999).

H1a: The likelihood of a firm making a voluntary environmental disclosure is higher in industries associated with visible environmental issues.

One distinctive facet of our empirical analysis involves a clear distinction between

the decision to participate in any, perhaps minimal, level of environmental disclosure, and the influences upon the quality of such disclosures. Sinclair-Desgagne and Gozlan(2003) introduce a theoretical model that permits companies to choose the quality of their environmental disclosures according to the nature of their prevailing stakeholder environment. They concl ude that, ‘the quality of voluntarily disclosed environmental information is largely demand-driven’ (p. 380) in the sense that high quality disclosures are expected to be associated with firms that face environmentally concerned stakeholders. Hence, in addition to systematic variation across industries in the likelihood that companies make environmental disclosures, we also hypothesise such variation in the quality of disclosures.

H1b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure is higher in industries associated with visible environmental issues.

(ii) The Environmental Performance of Firm

Disclosure fulfils a variety of important functions including informing relevant groups about the firm’s environmental performance, attempting to alter perceptions about the organization’s performance and altering societal expectations of firmperformance (Lindblom, 1994; Patten, 2002a; and Gray et al., 1995). Consistent with this, disclosure may be motivated by the desire to:

create an impression of sensitivity to important non-market influences that may be in the long-term interest of the shareholders (Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989, p. 39).

The need to create, and benefit from creating, such an impression would be expected to fall most heavily on firms that have a record of poor environmental performance. Furthermore, an impetus to disclose among poor performers is driven by the risk of damage to the reputation of senior corporate management that accompanies failure to report bad news in a true light (Trueman, 1997; Hughes and Sankar, 1997; and Skinner, 1994). Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:

H2a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is negatively associated with a firm’s environmental performance.

H2b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the worse is a firm’s environmental performance.

(iii) Firm Size and Organizational Visibility

Organizational size and visibility are commonly proposed as firm-level drivers of environmental disclosure (Patten, 2002a and 2002b; Hackston and Milne, 1996; and Cormier and Magnan, 2003). Large firms tend to be more visible to relevant publics and so tend to be subject to greater political and regulatory pressure from external interests (Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989; Patten 2002b; and Brown and Deegan, 1998).Becasuce of this, large firms may be especially driven to make environmental disclosures to demonstrate that their actions are legitimate and consistent with good corporate citizenship. Furthermore, Cowen et al. (1987) argue that larger organizations are more likely to use formal channels of communication (such as disclosures in annual reports or other corporate documentation) in order to disseminate information concerning corporate activities.

H3a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to firm size.

H3b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the larger is the firm.

Although firm size has often been used as a proxy for corporate visibility, much of the recent disclosure literature emphasises the importance of media exposure (Patten,2002a and 2002b; and Brown and Deegan, 1998). The link between media exposure and organizational visibility, which is well-established in the literature (Sharma and Nguan, 1999; and Meznar and Nigh, 1995), implies that organisations with a higher degree of media exposure tend to be more prone to pressure from social and political stakeholders. Indeed, evidence suggests that organisational visibility prompts firms to take leading roles in managing environmental impacts (Sharma and Nguan, 1999).Thus, we hypothesise that media exposure stimulates an active policy of disclosure.

H4a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positivel y related to a firm’s media exposure.

H4b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the greater is the firm’s media exposure.

(iv) Company Ownership

Traditionally, relationships between the owners of companies and their managers have been described from the perspective of the principle-agent model (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). When ownership is dispersed, shareholders, having little by way of direct authority over managers, must monitor their activities. In the absence of an ability to effectively monitor management, the consequent degree of informational asymmetry between the organisation and its shareholders may bring an adverse investor reaction. Indeed, there is evidence of such an effect on environmental disclosure activism (Ullmann, 1985). Hence, one would expect a diffused ownership structure to carry with it an incentive for a firm to voluntarily provide information to shareholders through disclosures (Cullen and Christopher, 2002). In addition, formal modes of communication, such as disclosures made in annual reports, may provide a relatively efficient means of providing information concerning the firm’s environmental impact to a large number of small shareholders. Therefore, we hypothesise that:

H5a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to the dispersion of share ownership.

H5b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the more dispersed is share ownership.

(v) Firm Resources

Financially healthy organizations can more easily meet their obligations to owner stakeholders and are less likely to be subject to significant pressure from other financial stakeholders, such as creditors. A developing strand of literature argues that the presence of sur plus financial resources, or ‘organizational slack’, can play a variety of roles in shaping corporate strategy, and the manner of its implementation (Singh,1986; and Sharfman et al., 1988). The presence of slack may stimulate proactive and innovative strategic decision-making (Cyert and March, 1963), or buffer the organization from its operating environment, and so permit suboptimal behaviours to arise and persist (Thompson, 1967). Indeed, in the context of voluntary environmental disclosures,1 slack may promote disclosure simply by providing the