Under Pressure? The Link Between Mandatory Climate Reporting and Firms’ Carbon Performance

2022/03/29 by Tobias Bauckloh, Christian Klein, Thomas Pioch +1 · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting #Regulation and Compliance Studies #Greenhouse gas #Business #Agency (philosophy) #Climate change #Carbon fibers #Accounting #Legitimacy #Global warming #Environmental economics #Climate change mitigation #Natural resource economics #Economics #Political science #Politics #Ecology

paper · doi:10.1177/10860266221083340

openalex publication_date 2022/03/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27

Abstract

We examine whether and how mandatory climate reporting leads to changes in firms’ carbon emissions. Drawing on legitimacy theory and using a difference-in-differences design, we assess the effect of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), introduced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010, on the carbon performance defined as carbon intensity and absolute carbon emissions of affected firms. We find that firms affected by the GHGRP improve their carbon intensity significantly more than unaffected firms after the introduction of the GHGRP, but not their absolute carbon emissions. The results are robust to changes in the difference-in-differences design. Overall, our study contributes to research on mandatory climate reporting by assessing the GHGRP’s suitability to generate a real sustainable change in firms’ operations and reduce their negative impact on our climate.

Citations

• FORUM: Reinventing Environmental Regulation from the Grassroots Up: Explaining and Expanding the Success of the Toxics Release Inventory
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• Carbon accounting [wikipedia]

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