Components of countries’ regulative dimensions and voluntary carbon disclosures

Abstract

The previous literature has demonstrated that countries’ regulative contexts positively influence voluntary corporate carbon disclosures. However, little research has been conducted into the relationship between the different components of the regulative dimension of institutions and voluntary carbon disclosure. Drawing on the theoretical framework of New Institutional Sociology (NIS), this study examines the influence of the different components of the regulative context (rules; monitoring mechanisms and punishments; rewards) both on firms’ propensity to disclose carbon information and on the quality of disclosures. Based on a global sample of 2176 companies that participated in the 2015 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) climate report, this paper uses the Heckman two-stage approach in an attempt to model firms’ decisions as to whether to disclose carbon information, as well as the quality of said disclosures. The results show that the regulative components positively influence firms’ decisions to voluntarily disclose carbon data. They also show that the quality of disclosures is positively affected by climate-related rules and rewards, but that it is not influenced by monitoring mechanisms and punishments related to climate change. This paper is the first to take the step of addressing the components of the climate-related regulative pillar of institutions in the same regression setting.