Governmental Ownership of Voluntary Sustainability Information Disclosure in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from Vietnam

Emerging economies have increasingly paid attention to sustainability issues in the business circle. However, few studies have explored what facilitates sustainability information disclosure. This study examines how corporate governance mechanisms, particularly government ownership, affect sustainab...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2020-08, Vol.12 (16), p.6686
Main Authors: Pham, Hang Thi Thuy, Jung, Sung-Chang, Lee, Su-Yol
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Corporate governance
Developing countries
Economic growth
Economic reform
Emerging markets
GDP
Globalization
Gross Domestic Product
LDCs
Limited liability companies
Regression analysis
Stakeholders
Studies
Sustainability
Sustainability reporting
Variance analysis
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Summary:Emerging economies have increasingly paid attention to sustainability issues in the business circle. However, few studies have explored what facilitates sustainability information disclosure. This study examines how corporate governance mechanisms, particularly government ownership, affect sustainability disclosure in an emerging economy—Vietnam. By combining related research streams, including stakeholder theory, institutional perspective, and principal–agent theory, we present a hypothesis on the effect of corporate governance on sustainability reporting. The logistic regression analysis and analysis of variance on 2678 Vietnamese sample firm-years from 2010 through 2016 indicate that government ownership is negatively associated with voluntary environmental and social information disclosure. Additionally, they demonstrate that ownership concentration tends to lower non-financial information disclosure, while individual largest shareholder has a positive effect. These findings provide managers and policymakers with theoretical and practical implications to encourage firms in emerging Asian economies such as Vietnam to adopt sustainability activities and disclose social information.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su12166686