A bibliometric review of corporate environmental disclosure literature

Bilal; Gerged, Ali Meftah; Arslan, Hafiz Muhammad; Abbas, Ali; Chen, Songsheng; Manzoor, Shahid

Abstract

Purpose
The study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research.

Design/methodology/approach
Using a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020.

Findings
The authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries.

Research limitations/implications
This study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature.

Originality/value
The authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature.

Citation

Bilal, Gerged, A. M., Arslan, H. M., Abbas, A., Chen, S., & Manzoor, S. (2023). A bibliometric review of corporate environmental disclosure literature. Journal of Accounting Literature, 46(2), 214-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/jal-01-2022-0006

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 31, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jun 16, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 9, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 14, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Accounting Literature
• Print ISSN: 0737-4607
• Electronic ISSN: 2452-1469
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 214-237
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/jal-01-2022-0006
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1903537