Environmental indicator disclosure of international contractors

ABSTRACT

Companies have acknowledged their corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years. However, environmental performance indicators are generally insufficiently disclosed.

This study has investigated the disclosure of environmental indicators in the CSR reports of international contractors and proposed the sequence and method for indicator disclosure. Measurement scales were used to analyze 34 environmental indicators of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 guidelines in terms of content requirements and characteristics. CSR reports of eight selected contractors were examined to calculate percentages of indicator disclosure. Finally, the indicators were ranked in three levels to present a meaningful disclosure sequence for construction companies.

The average disclosure rate of the 34 indicators of the eight contractors was 29%. A total of 3, 11, and 20 indicators were high, medium, and low disclosure, respectively. The disclosure percentages for materials, water, effluents and wastes, emissions, and energy were 63%, 42%, 37%, 36%, and 33%, respectively. A company can disclose high-disclosure quantitative indicators with priority, such as materials and water, and supplement them with qualitative ones. Materials are a crucial input of the construction process. Therefore, data regarding materials should be collected early to ensure that data are available for other indicators.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• environmental performance indicator
• Global Reporting Initiative guidelines
• contractor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).