Page 28 - DUT ICGA Abstract Book

ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE TREND AMONG MALAYSIAN PLANTATION COMPANIES
Seri Ayu Masuri Md Daud1* Azizah Abdullah1 Fadzlina Mohd Fahmi1 and Nurul Afzan Najid2
1 Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Selangor Kampus Puncak Alam Malaysia
2
Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Pahang Kampus Raub Malaysia
* Email: seriayu@uitm edu my
Abstract
Motivated by the growing concern for for environmental social and and governance (ESG) performance and and behaviours among corporations this study descriptively explores the voluntary environmental disclosures among publiclisted plantation plantation companies in in in Malaysia
As one of the the most polluting industries the the plantation plantation offers an interesting setting for a a a a a a study on on on corporate environmental disclosure practices Using a a a a a a content analysis of of the the the audited annual reports of of these plantation plantation companies we categorized the the the plantation plantation firms’ environmental disclosure into fourteen categories with each category having distinct pre-identified items We then employed binary coding for each disclosure item item assigning a a a a a score of 1 if the the item item is is is disclosed and 0 otherwise Overall this study documents an upward trend of environmental disclosure over the the sample years (i e e e e e e e e e e 2015 – 2019) Environmental Policy appears to be the most prevalent type of disclosure among the the the fourteen categories while the the the least disclosed environmental category is is is Financial Data Further analysis of of our data according to the the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ classifications reveals that the the environmental reporting among listed plantation firms in in in Malaysia
is is is still very much dominated by soft information Hard disclosure items (i e e e e e e e e e e e e e e governance structure and management systems related to environmental protection the credibility of the environmental environmental environmental disclosure environmental environmental environmental performance indicators and environmental environmental environmental spending) are difficult to be mimicked by the poor environmental performing firms and hence are usually disclosed only by good environmental environmental performers On the the other hand soft items cover vision and and environmental environmental strategy claims environmental environmental profile and environmental environmental initiatives Our results suggest that most o of the listed plantation firms in Malaysia
are still at at at the the early stage of their strategic move toward environmental protection KEYWORDS: ESG plantation companies environmental disclosure 26 7th International Conference on on on Governance and Accountability (ICGA) 2022