The primary objective of Environmental Reporting and Third Party
Statements was to test whether third party attestation statements
contained in voluntary corporate environmental reports added value in the eyes
of external stakeholders. Other goals of
the study included assessing which report elements contributed the most to
communicating credibility, and the credibility of different types of
organizations that perform certifications of corporate environmental
reports.
Voluntary environmental reporting
follows from implementation of business initiatives such as the Public
Environmental Reporting Initiative (PERI), Responsible Care®, the Coalition for
Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and the International
Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Business Charter for Sustainable Development. To
enhance the credibility of these reports, an increasing number of firms have
commissioned statements by third parties such as accounting or environmental
consulting firms. Many corporations are evaluating the use of third party
statements as a component of their International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) reporting or Eco-Management and Audit
Scheme (EMAS) audit processes.
Environmental Reporting & Third Party Statement
represents a systematic attempt to
assess the value of published third-party statements to key stakeholder
groups as well as the value of other elements of a voluntary environmental
report. This study reflects a growing effort to assess the value that is
generated by various corporate environmental initiatives.
Five focus groups were conducted in
1995 with environmental groups, institutional investors, regulators, the media,
and corporate environmental staff. None of the stakeholder groups that participated in this study believed
that recent third party statements added much, if any, incremental value to
corporate environmental reports published in 1994.The third
party statements consistently received lower importance ratings in comparison
with other elements of corporate environmental reports. These findings were
consistent for investors, environmental advocacy groups, the media, government
regulators and corporate representatives. Many respondents in each of the focus
groups said that third party statements had the potential to add incremental
value to future corporate environmental reports.
The primary objective of the study
was to test whether third-party attestation statements contained involuntary
corporate environmental reports added value in the eyes of external
stakeholders. A structured survey was administered to representatives of five
key stakeholder groups to permit systematic analysis of their responses. A copy
of the survey is provided in Appendix A. The notion of adding value was
assessed by comparing the quantitative responses of focus group participants to
a series of questions about different report features and information channels. The second goal of the study
was to assess which report elements contributed the most to communicating
credibility, whether the answer was third party attestation or some other
feature(s). This component of the study yielded numerous insights into what
external stakeholders value most. Differences between group preferences were
also explored.
The final goal of the study was to
assess the credibility of different types of organizations to perform
certifications of corporate environmental reports. Unlike regular annual
reports, which in the United States are invariably attested to by an accounting
firm, third-party attestation statements in corporate environmental reports
have been presented by management consultants, environmental engineering firms,
environmental strategy consultancies and nonprofit organizations.
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