Title Page
Contents
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 13
ABSTRACT 14
Chapter 1. Introduction 17
1.1. Background 17
1.2. Motivation and Research Purposes 19
1.3. Main Theories 20
1.4. Contributions 21
1.5. Outline of thesis 23
Chapter 2. Literature Review 24
2.1. Environmental Performance and Voluntary Environmental Disclosure 24
2.1.1. Inherent Characteristics of VED 25
2.1.2. Two Channels with Distinct Features 29
2.2. Nexus between ETS and VCD 38
2.2.1. Overview of ETS 39
2.2.2. Intrinsic Features of Interface between ETS and VCD 42
2.2.3. Prior Studies with Empirical Evidence 44
2.3. Theoretical Framework 47
2.3.1. Two Competing Theories 47
2.3.2. Complementary Theory: Institutional Theory 54
2.3.3. Other Theories used by Prior Studies 58
Chapter 3. Hypotheses Development 60
3.1. Carbon Performance and Voluntary Carbon Disclosure 60
3.2. Carbon Disclosure Strategy: How Internal Factors Interact with External Factors 66
3.2.1. Foreign sales ratio, Carbon performance, and Disclosure 67
3.2.2. Media visibility, Carbon performance, and Disclosure 69
Chapter 4. Research Design 72
4.1. Sample Selection 72
4.2. Data Measures 74
4.2.1. Voluntary Carbon Disclosure 74
4.2.2. Carbon Performance 77
4.2.3. Foreign Sales Ratio 78
4.2.4. Media Visibility 79
4.2.5. Control Variables 80
Chapter 5. Result and Analysis 85
5.1. Descriptive analysis 85
5.2. Regression Analysis 95
Chapter 6. Conclusion and Discussion 100
6.1. Summary of Main Results 100
6.2. Implications for Practice 102
6.3. Contributions of Research 103
6.4. Research Limitations 107
6.5. Future Research Suggestions 107
6.6. Concluding Remarks 108
BIBLIOGRAPHY 109
Table 3.1. Corporate Social Performance Strategy Model 64
Table 4.1. Contents Analysis Index for Scoring Sustainable Reports 76
Table 4.2. Industry Frequency 82
Table 4.3. Summary of Variables 84
Table 5.1. Summary of Company Carbon profile 85
Table 5.2. Distribution of Disclosure Scores 87
Table 5.3. Comparison between Different Industries 88
Table 5.4. Percentage distribution for each checklist item 91
Table 5.5. Descriptive Statistic 92
Table 5.6. Correlation Coefficient 94
Table 5.7. Regression Result 95
Figure 2.1. Sustainable Reports Publication Status by Year of Korean Companies 34
Figure 2.2. CDP Growth in Disclosing Companies Since 2003 38
Figure 2.3. Korean ETS 41