英国大型公司的自愿性环境信息披露【外文翻译】

外文文献翻译原文：Voluntary Environmental Disclosuresby Large UK Companies2. INFLUENCES ON VOLUNTARY ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE DECISIONSV oluntary disclosures are attempts to remove informational asymmetries between the firm and external agents, primarily agents in the investment community. As recent events in the arena of corporate social responsibility have demonstrated, ethical, social, and environmental aspects of business activities are associated with significant financial consequences. Given the possibility of hidden corporate attributes, investors may prefer not to invest in companies that fail to volunteer information concerning their environmental performance. The point is that, absent disclosure, ‘investors will assume the worst and will bid down its st ock price’ (Cormier and Magnan, 2003, p.47).In that sense, voluntary environmental disclosures may be viewed as attempts by firms to reduce the information risks (and their associated costs) faced by potential and actual investors.However, not all firms choose to make such disclosures, and those disclosures that are made are of varying quality. This is because disclosure is costly in two respects: the costs of measuring, verifying, collating and publishing environmental information; the loss of strategic discretion associated with making public commitments to verifiable future actions and/or performance (Verrecchia, 1983; Li et al., 1997; Cormier and Magnan, 1999; and Skinner, 1994). Corporate decisions concerning the provision and quality of voluntary environmental disclosures are therefore expected to hinge upon a range of firm and industry characteristics that influence the relative costs and benefits of disclosing such information (Cormier and Magnan, 1999 and 2003; and Li et al.,1997). The existing literature demonstrates that these costs and benefits are associated with pressure from external agents such as legislators, regulators,community and environmental lobby groups, consumers and socially responsible investors (Roberts,1992; Li et al., 1997; Sinclair-Desgagne and Gozlan, 2003; and Willis, 2003), the firm’s vulnerability to those pressures as captured by its size and media visibility (Cormier and Magnan,2003; Patten,2002b; and Roberts, 1992), its environmental performance(Patten,2002; and Ullmann,1985), its ownership and governance structures (Cormier and Magnan,2003; Roberts, 1992; and Cullen and Christopher, 2002), and resource availability (Cormier and Magnan,2003; and Roberts, 1992). We will discuss each of these factors in turn.(i) The Nature of Business ActivitiesThe existing environmental disclosure literature identifies a number of legislative, regulatory and institutional sources of pressure on the firm to make such disclosures, and notes that industries differ in respect of their inherent environmental impact(Halme and Huse, 1996), the visibility of environmental issues and the degree and type of regulatory intervention. Industries with a high environmental impact are characterised by their association with particularly visible environmental issues (Bowen,2000) such as global warming and the risk of oil spills. The activities of firms in these industries are subject to intense scrutiny from environmental pressure groups, and recent studies emphasize the visibility of environmental issues in determining environmental responsiveness (Bowen,2000; and Dutton et al., 1990). The association of the organization with environmental issues, in the eyes of external groups including investors and regulators, may stimulate environmental disclosure because of the enhanced urgency of visible issues. This promotes a need to remove informational asymmetries between the firmand external agents in order to reassure the latter regarding the activities of the firm (Dutton et al., 1990). Empirical study has associated high environmental impact with the metals, resources, paper and pulp, power generation,water, and chemicals sectors (Bowen, 2000; Sharma, 1997; and Hoffman, 1999).H1a: The likelihood of a firm making a voluntary environmental disclosure is higher in industries associated with visible environmental issues.One distinctive facet of our empirical analysis involves a clear distinction betweenthe decision to participate in any, perhaps minimal, level of environmental disclosure, and the influences upon the quality of such disclosures. Sinclair-Desgagne and Gozlan(2003) introduce a theoretical model that permits companies to choose the quality of their environmental disclosures according to the nature of their prevailing stakeholder environment. They concl ude that, ‘the quality of voluntarily disclosed environmental information is largely demand-driven’ (p. 380) in the sense that high quality disclosures are expected to be associated with firms that face environmentally concerned stakeholders. Hence, in addition to systematic variation across industries in the likelihood that companies make environmental disclosures, we also hypothesise such variation in the quality of disclosures.H1b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure is higher in industries associated with visible environmental issues.(ii) The Environmental Performance of FirmDisclosure fulfils a variety of important functions including informing relevant groups about the firm’s environmental performance, attempting to alter perceptions about the organization’s performance and altering societal expectations of firmperformance (Lindblom, 1994; Patten, 2002a; and Gray et al., 1995). Consistent with this, disclosure may be motivated by the desire to:create an impression of sensitivity to important non-market influences that may be in the long-term interest of the shareholders (Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989, p. 39).The need to create, and benefit from creating, such an impression would be expected to fall most heavily on firms that have a record of poor environmental performance. Furthermore, an impetus to disclose among poor performers is driven by the risk of damage to the reputation of senior corporate management that accompanies failure to report bad news in a true light (Trueman, 1997; Hughes and Sankar, 1997; and Skinner, 1994). Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses:H2a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is negatively associated with a firm’s environmental performance.H2b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the worse is a firm’s environmental performance.(iii) Firm Size and Organizational VisibilityOrganizational size and visibility are commonly proposed as firm-level drivers of environmental disclosure (Patten, 2002a and 2002b; Hackston and Milne, 1996; and Cormier and Magnan, 2003). Large firms tend to be more visible to relevant publics and so tend to be subject to greater political and regulatory pressure from external interests (Belkaoui and Karpik, 1989; Patten 2002b; and Brown and Deegan, 1998).Becasuce of this, large firms may be especially driven to make environmental disclosures to demonstrate that their actions are legitimate and consistent with good corporate citizenship. Furthermore, Cowen et al. (1987) argue that larger organizations are more likely to use formal channels of communication (such as disclosures in annual reports or other corporate documentation) in order to disseminate information concerning corporate activities.H3a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to firm size.H3b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the larger is the firm.Although firm size has often been used as a proxy for corporate visibility, much of the recent disclosure literature emphasises the importance of media exposure (Patten,2002a and 2002b; and Brown and Deegan, 1998). The link between media exposure and organizational visibility, which is well-established in the literature (Sharma and Nguan, 1999; and Meznar and Nigh, 1995), implies that organisations with a higher degree of media exposure tend to be more prone to pressure from social and political stakeholders. Indeed, evidence suggests that organisational visibility prompts firms to take leading roles in managing environmental impacts (Sharma and Nguan, 1999).Thus, we hypothesise that media exposure stimulates an active policy of disclosure.H4a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positivel y related to a firm’s media exposure.H4b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the greater is the firm’s media exposure.(iv) Company OwnershipTraditionally, relationships between the owners of companies and their managers have been described from the perspective of the principle-agent model (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). When ownership is dispersed, shareholders, having little by way of direct authority over managers, must monitor their activities. In the absence of an ability to effectively monitor management, the consequent degree of informational asymmetry between the organisation and its shareholders may bring an adverse investor reaction. Indeed, there is evidence of such an effect on environmental disclosure activism (Ullmann, 1985). Hence, one would expect a diffused ownership structure to carry with it an incentive for a firm to voluntarily provide information to shareholders through disclosures (Cullen and Christopher, 2002). In addition, formal modes of communication, such as disclosures made in annual reports, may provide a relatively efficient means of providing information concerning the firm’s environmental impact to a large number of small shareholders. Therefore, we hypothesise that:H5a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to the dispersion of share ownership.H5b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the more dispersed is share ownership.(v) Firm ResourcesFinancially healthy organizations can more easily meet their obligations to owner stakeholders and are less likely to be subject to significant pressure from other financial stakeholders, such as creditors. A developing strand of literature argues that the presence of sur plus financial resources, or ‘organizational slack’, can play a variety of roles in shaping corporate strategy, and the manner of its implementation (Singh,1986; and Sharfman et al., 1988). The presence of slack may stimulate proactive and innovative strategic decision-making (Cyert and March, 1963), or buffer the organization from its operating environment, and so permit suboptimal behaviours to arise and persist (Thompson, 1967). Indeed, in the context of voluntary environmental disclosures,1 slack may promote disclosure simply by providing theresources to meet the accompanying administrative costs.We propose two measures of firm resources for inclusion in this study: profitability and leverage. Firstly, profits provide managers with a pool of resources from which the costs of making environmental disclosures are funded. Secondly, firms with relatively low levels of leverage may experience less pressure from creditor stakeholders and therefore find it easier both to raise funds with which they can fund environmental disclosures, and to have the discretionary ability to focus on organizational activities,such as voluntary disclosure, that are only indirectly linked to the financial success of the firm. In addition, less of their profit streams will be devoted to meeting interest payments to debt holders.H6a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to a firm’s profitability.H6b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the more profitable is the firm.H7a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is negatively related to firm leverage.H7b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be lower the higher is the degree of firm leverage.(vi) Board CompositionHaniffa and Cooke (2002) argue that:corporate governance should be considered [as an influence on disclosure] because it is the board of directors that manages information disclosure in annual reports and therefore disclosure may be a function of the constituents of boards (p. 318).The prevalence of agents, such as non-executive directors, who tend to be more strongly aligned with external stakeholder interests than managers (Wang and Dewhirst, 1992) may provide, ‘additional windows on the world’ (Tricker, 1984,p. 171). Better alignment with the views of external groups brings greater expectation of voluntary disclosure activism.H8a: The likelihood of participation in voluntary environmental disclosure is positively related to the number of non-executive directors.H8b: The quality of voluntary environmental disclosure tends to be higher the more non-executive directors the firm has.3. DATA AND METHOD OF ESTIMATIONThe starting point for our sample is the FTSE All-Share Index. The All-Share index is the broadest index of UK listed stocks, representing over 98% of the UK market capitalisation. At the date of our study, 2000, the All-Share index comprised approximately 700 companies (excluding investment trusts) drawn from a wide spectrum of business activities. For our purposes, complete data could be obtained for 447 companies (or about 64% of the FTSE All-Share firms). Throughout our analysis, unless otherwise stated, we introduce a one-year lag between the dependent and independent variables, i.e. disclosure in 2000 is determined by firm and industry characteristics in 1999. This helps to clarify any potentially troubling issues of causality.Approximately 47% of the sample are manufacturers, while just over 33% of the sample are service industry companies (over 9% of which are retailers) while an additional 7% are allocated to the financial services sector. Almost 10% of sample companies are involved in construction, while the remaining 3% are utilities.The DTI’s Small Business Servi ce data suggest that approximately 56% of the large firms in the sectors covered by our analysis are manufacturers, approximately a quarter of 1% are utilities or are involved in extraction, 26% are wholesalers or retailers, 11% are involved with transport, storage or communication and6%are hotels or restaurants.By this yardstick, the sample analyzed here is broadly representative. Differences arise because of the relatively rough industrial classification employed in the DTI statistics and because our sample is composed disproportionately of very large firms. This leads to the over-sampling from industries where the average size of firms is very large and the under-sampling of firms in industries where the average size of firmis small. Hence our sample includes a higher than expected proportion of firms from the utilities and oil/gas/mining sectors and a lower than expected proportion of firms from the retail sector.Source: Stephen Brammer and Stephen Pavelin.Voluntary Environmental Disclosuresby Large UK Companies[J].Journal of Business Finace and Accounting,2006, (33):1168-1188.译文：英国大型公司的自愿性环境信息披露2. 影响自愿性环境会计信息披露的决定因素通过自愿披露信息来努力消除公司和外部代理之间的信息不对称，主要是在投资环境领域的代理。