Do Australian companies report environmental news objectively?: An analysis of environmental disclosures by firms prosecuted successfully by the Environmental Protection Authority.

The article investigates the environmental reporting practices of a sample of twenty Australian companies which were subject to success prosecution by the New South Wales and Victorian Environmental Protection Authorities (EPA). The authors analyzed the annual reports of the companies for each of the years from 1990 to 1993. In order to determine the extent of environmental disclosures within the companies' annual reports, the authors reviewed the entire reports thoroughly for any disclosures related to their interaction with the environment. Environmental disclosures constitute part of what frequently are labeled social responsibility disclosures which can include, among other things, disclosures relating to the interaction between an organization and its physical and social environment inclusive of disclosures relating to human resources, community involvement, the natural environment, energy, and product safety. The amount of environmental disclosure in each case was determined by the use of content analysis, individual words being the unit of measurement.