The language of US corporate environmental disclosure

    Authors

    C. H. Cho; R. W. Roberts;D. M. Patten

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Account. Organ. Soc.

    Keywords

    SOCIAL-RESPONSIBILITY DISCLOSURE; IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT; ORGANIZATIONAL; LEGITIMACY; PERFORMANCE; OUTCOMES; Business, Finance

    Abstract

    We rely on prior work in environmental disclosure and corporate impression management to investigate whether there are self-serving biases present in the language and verbal tone used in corporations environmental disclosures Specifically, we argue that the degree of bias in these narratives varies systematically based on firm environmental performance. hypothesizing that disclosures of worse environmental performers exhibit significantly more "optimism" and less "certainty" than their better-performing counterparts. We test our two hypotheses using a cross-sectional sample of corporate environmental disclosures contained in US 10-K annual reports Utilizing the content analysis software DICTION to determine "optimism" and "certainty" scores for the disclosures, we find empirical support for both hypotheses Our study contributes significantly to research in environmental disclosure by investigating bias in the use of language and verbal tone as a tool for managing stakeholder impressions and by finding empirical support for this role Thus, the language and verbal tone used in corporate environmental disclosures, in addition to their amount and thematic content, should be considered when investigating the relation between corporate disclosure and performance (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Accounting Organizations and Society

    Volume

    35

    Issue/Number

    4

    Publication Date

    1-1-2010

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    431

    Last Page

    443

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000278689500003

    ISSN

    0361-3682

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