Relationships between environmental performance disclosures and data sources in CSR reporting

Abstract

A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report discloses a company’s economic environmental and social performances At present most CSR literature discusses the CSR adoption of enterprises in various countries but less on the preparation process and the extent of disclosure of the report This study explores the relationships between environmental disclosure and data sources by adopting case studies and content analysis methods First it referred to the GRI Standards preparation instructions and linked the actual implementation process of a case company Second it followed the GRI indicators’ disclosure requirements the data sources proposed by ISO 14031 analyzed the classification and quantities of indicators and the case company’s disclosure of 30 environmental indicators and its relevance to the sources of indicators The results of the study showed the relationships between the data sources and the disclosure percentages The correlation coefficient between the number of data sources and the disclosure percentage is 0 27 representing a low correlation Second the more external and qualitative sources of data the lower level of disclosure seems to be The data source of higher disclosure percentages is "finance and accounting records " The source of low disclosure is "monitoring and measuring " The average quality of data is 2 3 which is lowly correlated with the degree of disclosure (0 17) After the supplement of CSR content the correlation increased to 0 27 The improvement of data quality may lead to higher indicator disclosure

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Andrew S. Chang (Supervisor)