Date of Award
Spring 2021
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Advisor(s)
John Shon
Abstract
Sustainability accounting is currently limited by the voluntary nature of its disclosure by corporations in the United States. In 2014 the European Union mandated that certain corporations must disclose non-financial information through public disclosures. This mandate includes corporations that are public interest entities employing over 500 individuals. It can be hypothesized that companies will begin to increase their corporate social responsibility disclosures, specifically ESG Metrics (Environment, Social, and Governance), as these measures will soon be revealed to the public and would likely impress key shareholders. By analyzing various ESG metrics, the importance that sustainability has to the company’s values will be revealed. Companies will start to disclose more ESG information to their shareholders to comply with this mandate, but more so to provide more value and information to stakeholders. This study will view the effect that the European Union’s directive had on Bloomberg ESG, Environment, Social, and Governance disclosure scores. Overall, the purpose of this research is to determine whether public policies related to non-financial disclosures are actually beneficial to society and will genuinely encourage companies to report more ESG metrics. At the conclusion of this study, it was found that there is a slight positive, but highly significant relationship between the enactment of the mandatory non-financial disclosure policy on all five dependent variables, the most positive and significant being the ESG disclosure score. Moreover, of the four interaction variables that were studied, only the Deutsche and Euronext stock exchanges returned as being significant above the 95% confidence level. This can be further explained given the nature of the European Directive that was issued, as well as how the mandatory non-financial disclosure policy affects all public interest entities with over 500 employees.
Recommended Citation
Zaromatidis, Nicholas, "The Effect of Mandatory Non-Financial Disclosures on Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting in the European Energy Sector" (2021). Gabelli School of Business Honors Thesis Collection. 43.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/gabelli_thesis/43
