Time-series cross-sectional environmental performance and disclosure relationship: specific evidence from a less-developed country

This paper relies on ‘vulnerability and exploitability’ framework to submit new insights into legitimacy theory and voluntary disclosure theory using specific empirical evidence from the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The study connects the voluntary and legitimizing disclosure behaviors, regarding carbon emission due to gas flaring, of dominant companies in the Nigerian upstream petroleum sector to the vulnerability and exploitability of Nigeria as a less developed country. The hypothesized relations between gas flaring-related environmental performance and two forms of its disclosure (volume and substance) are estimated and tested using Prais-Winsten regression with Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE). While the paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to measure gas flaring-related carbon performance, the two forms of gas flaring-related disclosures are measured using content analysis. We document significant positive and negative association between gas flaring-related carbon emission performance, on one hand, and the volumetric disclosure and disclosure substance on the other hand. These results imply that while the positive relation confirms the vulnerable nature of Nigeria as a less developed country, the negative relation is linked to the country’s exploitability. It is also empirically established that environmental performance is one of the key factors responsible for the undulating trend in the volume of environmental disclosures by large corporations operating in less-developed countries.