Authors: PANTELIS ZISIS

Title: THE EFFECT OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS ON ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING PERFORMANCE

Abstract

The current study seeks to examine the efficiency of governance issues on environmental disclosure. It emphasizes on the examination of the environmental disclosure performance of European and non-European listed companies. The paper adopts a quantitative analysis approach. It examines the data provided by Thomson Reuters in order to determine the amount of environmental reporting – these data are compared with various corporate governance measures.

The underlying model is based on the linear (in parameters) specification:

Y = b + b1X1 + b2X2 + …… + bvXv + e

The variables that are tested with the linear model include:

Board size, Ownership concentration, CEO duality, Audit committee, compensation, Blockholders, Independent directors on audit committee, female BoD as well as some control variables such as Total assets, ROA and market capitalisation

The hypotheses which are tested are as follows:

H1: There is a positive relationship between the board size and corporate environmental reporting.

H2: There is a negative relationship between CEO duality and corporate environmental reporting.

H3: There is a positive relationship between the proportion of non – executive members on Audit committee and corporate environmental reporting.