Authors: Florence Depoers Thomas Jeanjean Tiphaine Jérôme
Publish Date: 2014/11/08
Volume: 134, Issue: 3, Pages: 445-461
Abstract
As global warming continues to attract growing levels of attention various stakeholders states general public investors and lobbyists have put climate change on corporate agendas and expect firms to disclose relevant greenhouse gas GHG information In this paper we investigate the consistency of the GHG information voluntarily disclosed by French listed firms through two different communication channels corporate reports CR and the Carbon Disclosure Project CDP More precisely we contrast the amounts of GHG emissions reported and the methodological explanations provided named ‘traceability’ in each channel Consistent with a stakeholder theory perspective we find that GHG amounts are significantly lower in the CR than in the CDP We also find that firms increase the CR figures’ traceability when there is a discrepancy between disclosures in the two channels We suggest that the aim of this greater traceability is to enhance information credibility across the different channels used
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