Corporations’ Eco-Consciousness in the New Deal of Non-financial Information Disclosure System: Preliminary Evidence from Italian and French Practices

Abstract

This chapter deals with the sensibility of selected Italian and French listed corporations toward climate change issues and related disclosure in the light of the recent transposition of Directive 95/2014 into the respective legislations. After briefly reviewing the path which has brought to the aforementioned directive and how Italy and France have transposed its contents, eight firms (four for each country) belonging to the most representative and comparable sectors of the two countries have been selected. Then, selected features related to their non-financial information dealing with climate change aspects have been analyzed using the method of content analysis. The results of this effort are an unweighted climate-related disclosure index, which allows us to resume the state of the art of firms’ eco-consciousness individually, at country level and in comparative terms. Evidence achieved suggests that the directive and its transposition have fostered higher attention to climate change aspects, especially in country with a poor tradition in disclosing non-financial information like Italy. On the other hand, the flexibility agreed by Directive and respective laws rise up questions regarding whether, to what extent and where information have to be disclosed in order to make possible effective comparisons. At last, the lack, until now, of any attempt to translate in monetary terms effects of climate-related behaviors and actions draws out doubts regarding the consistency of the overall efforts actors involved are spending to enhance the sensibility toward climate change and environmental issues.