Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences: Home

Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and content of environmental information disclosure provided in the annual reports of companies listed on Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) of Sri Lanka and to test whether the size of the company determines the level of disclosure of environmental information. Sixty eight listed companies representing seventeen different sectors were selected randomly and the data was collected from the annual reports of those companies for the financial year 2011/20121 using content analysis. The finding of the study indicates that forty one companies (62.29%) provided environmental information in their annual reports and the level of the disclosure varies across industries.It can be seen that the highest level of the environmental disclosure items are reported under sustainability reporting and the next level of disclosure is under the CEO reports and the vision, mission, and value statements. The study identifies that the extent of environmental disclosure varies across industries. Environmental reporting across industries also indicates a wide variation in terms of emphasis on themes and the average number of word devoted to them. However, maximum disclosure across all the industries can be seen for the theme ?Green product? whiles the lowest disclosed theme is ?Spills.? Further, the finding on the relationship between amount of environmental disclosure and the size of the firms are significantly negative and inconsistent with the prior studies which found a positive relationship between size of the company and amount of environmental disclosure. The value of this study contributed to the literature by evaluating voluntary environmental disclosure made by Sri Lankan Listed companies of different sectors in their annual report. Further this study can be extended to assess the status and determinants of their environmental disclosure for a large sample of Sri Lankan corporate sectors.

Keywords: socio corporate environmental disclosure, sustainability, reporting, size of the firm, content analysis

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