Environmental disclosure and innovation activity: Evidence from EU corporations

Innovation is expected to become an essential element in overcoming climate change issue. To examine the factors that might induce such innovation, this study focuses on environmental disclosure and scrutinises how it influences innovation activity. Utilising firm-level panel datasets from EU corporations (fiscal years 2000-08) that were constructed based on the Carbon Disclosure Project data and the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, I estimate dynamic panel models using the system GMM estimator. The potential endogeneity issue is addressed in the models. Innovation activity is measured by R&D investment. The results show that corporations that implement a specific environmental disclosure action, namely, disclosing Scope 3 GHGemissions, are more likely to invest in R&D. This study sugg ests that supply chain management is crucial for corporations to enhance their innovation activity. In addition,this study reveals that a policy that stimulates corporate incentives to disclose Scope 3 GHG emissions may be a key to enhancing innovation activity. Since communication between corporations and other stakeholders, which may be enhanced by environmental disclosure , is a significant factor in encouraging corporate innovation activity, it is important to construct a system wherein environmental disclosure is evaluated objectively and corporations with strong environmental performance are adequately rewarded.