Environmental information disclosure and green technology innovation: Empirical evidence from China

Environmental information disclosure (EID) of listed companies is a significant and essential reference for assessing their environmental protection commitment. However, the content and form of EID are complex, and previous assessment studies involved manual scoring mainly by the experts in this field. It is subjective and has low timeliness. Therefore, this paper proposes an automatic evaluation framework of EID quality based on text mining (TM), including the EID index system’s construction, automatic scoring of environmental information disclosure quality, and EID index calculation. Furthermore, based on the EID of 801 listed companies in China’s heavy pollution industry from 2013 to 2017, case studies are conducted. The case study results show that the overall quality of the EID of listed companies in China’s heavily polluting industries is low, and there is a gap differentiation between the 16 industries. Compared with the subjective manual scoring method, TM evaluation can evaluate the quality of EID more effectively and accurately. It has great potential and can become an essential tool for the sustainable development of society and listed companies.

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Analysing and evaluating environmental information disclosure in universities: the role of corporate governance, stakeholders and culture

International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education ◽

10.1108/ijshe-08-2020-0323 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Jesús Mauricio Flórez-Parra ◽

Maria Victoria Lopez-Perez ◽

Antonio M. López Hernández ◽

Raquel Garde Sánchez

Keyword(s):

Information Disclosure ◽

Stakeholder Participation ◽

Environmental Information ◽

Content Type ◽

Environmental Actions ◽

Determining Factors ◽

Environmental Information Disclosure ◽

Internal And External Factors ◽

The University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the internal and external factors related to the disclosure of environmental information in universities which reflect the actions carried out in these universities. Design/methodology/approach Taking as reference the first 200 universities in the Shanghai ranking, several factors associated with the degree of environmental information disclosure in universities – governance dimension, the relationship and participation of stakeholders, position and prestige as signs of the quality of the institution and cultural concern in the university’s country for the environment – are analysed. Findings The results obtained show that the size of the leadership team, stakeholder participation, the position of the university in rankings and cultural concern in the university’s country for the environment are determining factors in the university’s environmental actions and, consequently, in their disclosure. Other factors – such as the size of the university, the level of self-financing and financial autonomy – do not affect the disclosure of environmental information. Originality/value Scant research exists on the environmental commitments of universities; this paper aims to fill that gap. Their role as the main channel of research and as instructors of future professionals makes them points of reference in society. Research on university ranking has traditionally focussed on teaching and research results, but environmental issues are becoming increasingly important. This paper enumerates the factors that influence the dissemination of environmental information in the most prestigious universities. This research also provides an original approach by considering not only top-down but also bottom-up strategies through communication channels and the incidence of cultural factors.

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