Environmental reporting quality in Japan: discussing normativity, quasi-mandatory approach and norm entrepreneurship

Purpose Japan applies a quasi-mandatory approach to corporate environmental reporting by defining the desired norm through formal law and guidelines and pushing large companies to be role models regardless of their sensitivity to environmental impacts. This study aims to analyze the change in Japanese companies reporting quality to justify this approach’s capability to produce normativity of environmental reporting. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the change in corporate environmental reporting quality and the effect of company characteristics on it. The analysis focuses on 88 companies for 2008, 2013 and 2018, resulting in 264 company-year observations. Findings The result shows a continuous upward trend, although it is unsatisfactory regarding the comparability and free from error characteristics. Then, company size positively affects the quality, and sensitivity to environmental impacts does not. Overall, the findings indicate that Japan is moving toward normativity through the quasi-mandatory approach and the norm entrepreneurship of its large companies, regardless of their sensitivity to environmental impacts. Research limitations/implications This study could relieve the belief that it is necessary to apply a mandatory approach to improve reporting quality and enrich views on the effect of company characteristics which mainly used only the legitimacy perspective. Originality/value This study proposes a more comprehensive measure of environmental reporting quality. The measure is based on the qualitative characteristics of useful information from the most influential accounting standard-setting bodies. In addition, the effect of company characteristics on the quality is explained based on the norm entrepreneurship view instead of the legitimacy perspective.