The Relationship between Corporate Governance Attributes and Environmental Information Disclosure

Recent expansions in the rights of interested parties to obtain knowledge regarding corporate social responsibility have resulted in significant increases in the number of requests for information about environmental performance. Corporate social responsibility disclosure is very relevant to the decision-making processes of a board, and corporate governance may exert a significant effect on environmental information disclosure (EID), serving communication function for stakeholders as well as shareholders. Therefore, the principal objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the association between corporate governance and corporate EID as corporate social responsibility. The purpose of this study is two fold. First, I examine the influence of corporate governance on the propensity of EID practices. Second, I examine empirically whether corporate governance affects the transparency of EID practices as well. My findings showed that the existence of voluntarily elected outside directors with environmental expertise was a critically important indicator of EID and the level thereof. These results indicated that outside directors with environmental expertise pressured controlling owners to implement EID, and also pressured controlling owners to disclose environmental information in a transparent manner. The results of this study demonstrated that national pension shareholders pressured controlling owners to exercise EID, and also that they pressured controlling owners to disclose environmental information transparently, thereby exerting monitoring power as blockholders. Additionally, the result of this study showed that foreign shareholders as blockholders pressured controlling owners to engage in increased environmental disclosure. More specifically, in terms of the environmental expertise of outside directors and the blockholders such as national pension and foreign shareholders, I empirically examined the relationships between corporate governance and EID practices. This is the first in a series of empirical tests of environmental disclosure. These results may prove helpful in policy decision-making with regard to both environmental disclosures and corporate governance. These findings may prove particularly useful in the allocation of resources for firms that practice social responsibility reporting in the capital market, and the results might have some effect on corporate environmental disclosure. Similar studies should be conducted in the future with a view toward a broader cross-country comparative analysis.