Foreign Institutional Investors, Legal Origin, and Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosure

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

The disclosure of corporate environmental performance is an increasingly important element of a firm’s ethical behavior. We analyze how the legal origin of foreign institutional investors affects a firm’s voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure. Using a large sample of firms from 36 countries, we show that foreign institutional ownership from civil law countries improves the scope and quality of a firm’s greenhouse gas emissions reporting. This relation is robust to addressing endogeneity and selection biases. The effect is more pronounced in firms from non-climate-sensitized countries, for which the gap between firms’ environmental standards and investors’ environmental targets is potentially larger, and in less international firms. Firms with a higher level of voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure also exhibit higher valuations.

OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftJournal of Business Ethics
Jahrgang182
Ausgabenummer4
Seiten (von - bis)903-932
Anzahl der Seiten30
ISSN0167-4544
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.02.2023

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
We thank Arno Kourula (Editor), three anonymous referees, Najah Attig, Narjess Boubakri, Johannes Barg, and Timo Busch for helpful comments. We appreciate the generous financial support from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

DOI