Environmental Reporting and its Relation to Corporate Environmental Performance

This study examines how both the level and the nature of environmental information voluntarily disclosed by Australian firms relate to their underlying environmental performance. Disclosure is scored using an index developed by Clarkson et al . (2008 ) based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines and the environmental performance measure is based on emission data available from the National Pollutant Inventory (NPI). The sample consists of 51 firms that reported to the NPI in both 2002 and 2006. The findings are as follows. First, descriptive statistics indicate that while there was modest improvement in disclosure between 2002 and 2006, the highest disclosure score obtained was just slightly in…