The Role of Corporate Governance and Company Specific Characteristics on Environmental Disclosure Practices in India

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of corporate governance factors and company specific characteristics of environmental disclosure in a developing country, namely, India. Design / Methodology/ Approach-A static and GMM-based dynamic panel data regression analysis is used to measure the ecological practices by considering the sample size of 100 non-financial listed companies taken from the National Stock Exchange between 2010 to 2021. Findings-Using two-step dynamic panel data GMM-based estimation, the study finds that governance factors like board size and board meetings are showing a positive effect on disclosure practices. whereas, in the case of an independent director a negative influence can be seen. But in the case of the squared term of independent director, there remains a positive effect on environmental activities. However, in the case of company specific characteristics firm age and the debt-equity ratio are positively influencing environmental activities where as firm size is found to influence negatively on disclosure practices. Originality/value-This study improves the mounting literature on the association between corporate governance factors, company specific characteristics, and environmental practices from an emerging economy standpoint. Specifically, the study inspects the dynamism and endogeneity effect along with the non-linear effect of different independent factors on environmental disclosure.