LISTED COMPANIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an empirical study undertaken on current practice of physicaland social environmental disclosure in annual report of public listed companies in Sri Lanka.Generally listed companies are the largest private sector business organizations of a country.Their activities could effect the .physical; and social environment positively as well asnegatively. Company managers and accountants pay attention to the recently developed conceptof green accounting and environmental reporting. University academics in accounting havecommenced contributions to journals in the sub field of accounting and reporting ofenvironmental information. In this article current practice of environmental reporting by listedcompanies in Sri Lanka is examined and the relationship between the level of environmentaldisclosure and selected two company characteristics, total value of assets and number ofshareholders are statistically tested. Environmental information available in annual reports oncompany transactions, transformations, events, and environmental factors affecting them areconsidered as data. A significant variation in disclosure of environmental information is foundamong the companies. The result of the examination has revealed a highly significantrelationship between the value of the total assets and the environmental disclosure. While largecompanies provide more environmental information small companies provide lesser amount ofsuch information through the annual reports. The relationship between the number ofshareholders and the environmental disclosure is not statistically significant. Supply ofenvironmental information does not vary in relation to the number of shareholders of thecompanies.