Biodiversity disclosure in Australia: effect of GRI and institutional factors

ABSTRACT

The study scrutinised the impact of the adoption of Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) G4 guidelines on Australian listed companies’ biodiversity reporting and examined the change of biodiversity reporting from the pre-G4 to the post-G4 era. The impacts of certain firm-specific factors on biodiversity reporting were also examined. Our results show a significant increase in biodiversity reporting during the G4 era as compared to the G3 era, indicating an improved voluntary reporting regime facilitates the extent of biodiversity reporting and introduces more transparency and accountability. The use of GRI’s G4 guidelines, greater media exposure, metals and mining industry membership of companies, and smaller board size increases the extent of firms’ biodiversity disclosure but firm size and profitability do not affect the extent of biodiversity disclosure. Australian biodiversity disclosure increased significantly over time (2012–2015) under the newly released Australia’s Biodiversity Conservation Strategy 2010–2030 coupled with the GRI’s G4 guidelines. These results are particularly important to policy makers because they encourage the development of appropriate strategies, coupled with the GRI G4 guidelines, to enhance the quantity and quality of biodiversity disclosures.

KEYWORDS:

• Biodiversity
• disclosures
• G4 guidelines
• GRI
• media exposure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Rank regression model is particularly helpful in disclosure research with small sample size (Cooke 1998) and has been widely applied by previous disclosure studies to overcome normality problem of variables (Allen and Bennett 2010).

2 The S&P/ASX 200 ‘Industrials’ includes companies whose businesses are dominated by one of the following activities: the manufacture of capital goods, including construction, engineering & building products and industrial machinery; or, the provision of transportation services and transportation infrastructure.