Testing the Spillover Effects of Sustainability Reporting: Evidence from the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate the country-level drivers of sustainability reporting level (quantity) in the public sector using spillover theory. The results proved that the sector-level and geographical spillover effects have the significant determinants of sustainability reporting of the public sector. This finding implies that the sustainability reporting practices of a non-public sector has a significant influence on the sustainability reporting practices of the public sector. Moreover, the public sectors in countries that share the same geographical vicinity are affected by one another’s sustainability reporting practices. The results are robust to various alternative models, samplings, and measurements.

KEYWORDS:

• Spillover effect
• public sector
• sustainability reporting
• GRI

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For space consideration, we could not incorporate the list of countries in the sample into the body of the main text. It is available upon request from the authors.

2. In South Africa, the sustainability reporting is regulated by King Report on Governance for South Africa for companies listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (Institute of Directors in Southern Africa, 2009).

3. The outputs of all these Robustness checks are tabulated and are available upon request from the authors. For space consideration, we could not incorporate them into the body of the main text.

4. The only exception is that the Tobit model does not support this consequence in the non-GRI model.