Environmental Reporting Practices In Malaysia And Australia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of environmental reporting by Malaysian and Australian companies on ‘other’ reports, i.e. other than annual reports.  The paper employs content analysis to study the environmental disclosures made by the selected 100 companies in the two countries.  Regression analysis is performed on potential influencing factors for environmental reporting.  The findings are also compared to previous studies on environmental reporting in corporate annual reports by Yusoff and Lehman (2008).  The paper finds that environmental reporting in ‘other’ reports (Malaysia and Australia) are largely descriptive and in qualitative form.  In addition, the influencing factors for environmental reporting are of similar quality to those made in annual reports, in both countries.  These findings imply that this type of communicating environmental information does not contribute greater corporate accountability among companies in fulfilling stakeholders’ needs and demands for environmental information.  Hence, more efforts are needed to promote better and greener environmental reporting practice.  This study comparatively explores the environmental practices and interprets the possible link between influencing factors for environmental reporting and actual environmental reporting practices on a two-country basis, between Malaysia and Australia.