Social and Environmental Disclosure by Chinese Firms

Yingjun Lu, Indra Abeysekera

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040288832
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Given the increased social and environmental problems in China, this book looks into the social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms by constructing a stakeholder-driven, three-dimensional, disclosure index. The book contains a three-part study: the first part explores the current status of social and environment disclosure practices. The second part empirically examines the relationship between corporate social and environmental disclosure and various influencing factors (i.e. stakeholders' power and corporate characteristics). The third part empirically examines the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (i.e. publishing a CSR report and the quality of the CSR report) and socially responsible reputation.

The book finds that the CSR report provided more stakeholder-relevant social and environmental disclosure than the annual report. It also finds that corporate characteristics such as firm size, profitability and industry classification are all statistically significant factors influencing the social and environmental disclosure of the Chinese firms studied. Shareholders significantly influenced firms' social and environmental disclosure, and creditors significantly influenced firms' disclosure related to their environmental performance. The final part of the study reports that publishing a CSR report and CSR reporting quality had a positive influence on firms' socially responsible reputations and that the CEO/chairman duality negatively influenced firms' socially responsible reputation.

This book will be of interest to those who are keen to learn more about corporate social responsibilities in the context of Chinese firms.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Literature review
• 3 Theoretical framework
• 4 Research methodology and methods
• 5 Empirical results – the current social and environmental disclosure practices of socially responsible Chinese listed firms
• 6 Empirical results – stakeholders’ power, corporate characteristics, and social and environmental disclosure
• 7 Empirical results – CSR report, corporate governance and corporate reputation
• 8 Conclusions
• Appendix 1: 2008 and 2009 Chinese listed firms’ social responsibility ranking list
• Appendix 2: Standard disclosure items of the GRI (G3) sustainability reporting guidelines
• Appendix 3: Social and environmental disclosure measurement in the literature
• Appendix 4: Questionnaire
• Appendix 5: Rating criteria of the Chinese listed firms’ social responsibility ranking list
• Appendix 6: Nonparametric tests for context disclosure types
• Appendix 7: Nonparametric tests for performance disclosure types
• Appendix 8: Importance of SEDI items
• References
• Index