Measuring for climate actions: a disclosure study of ten megacities

Abstract

Purpose -This paper aims to explore the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by megacities.Three dimensions were considered. First, what communication channels are used by world megacities to disclose their emissions reduction target (ERT) and emissions reduction actions (ERA)? Second, the consistency of disclosed ERT and ERA across different channels. Third, the quality of the disclosed ERA in different channels.Design/methodology/approach -Ten megacities selected for review were in Australia, Europe, the USA, the UK and South Africa. First, ERT and ERA information was searched in different disclosure media to identify the common communication channels used by the megacities. Second, the documentary analysis was undertaken to assess the consistency of reported ERT and ERA information across the identified channels. Third, a scoring system was developed and applied to evaluate the quality of the disclosed ERA information, based on the extent to which megacities provided descriptions of emission reduction actions and reported the impact of the actions and the cost to implement them.Findings -Megacities primarily used third-party channels and their channels to disclose ERT-and ERArelated information. Social media use to provide climate change information is also growing. The study also finds that ERT information is consistent between third-party channels and megacities' channels. However, around half of the disclosed ERA between third-party and megacities' channels are not consistent. Quality assessment for the disclosed ERA in different channels shows that megacities have provided limited information regarding the impacts and the cost of their ERA, which raises a question about the usefulness of disclosure.Research limitations/implications -The findings are important for policymakers and city officials designing cities' GHG reporting standards and developing policies for programs to reduce emissions. Also, for stakeholders' understanding of cities' commitment and actions to reduce emissions, as well as the impact of their actions, and for managers responsible for measuring, reporting and mitigating emissions from current and future actions.Originality/value -Prior studies primarily focused on corporate greenhouse emissions disclosure to the carbon disclosure project, whereas this paper examines emissions disclosure at the geographic level. Moreover, prior studies of the public sector focused on the scope of climate change disclosure but did not evaluate the consistency and quality of the disclosure. However, this study explores three different disclosure

Environmental disclosure and stakeholder engagement via social media: State of the art and potential in public utilities

“…A more dedicated and pluralistic use of social media by PUs, and by organisations more generally, could also make it possible to overcome the difficulties, in terms of diffusion (Giacomini, Rocca, Carini, & Mazzoleni, ; Stubbs, Higgins, & Milne, ), effectiveness, and credibility (Niemann & Hoppe, 2017; Mia et al, ; Deegan, ; Gray, ; Gray, ), that the sustainability report has encountered as a legitimacy and stakeholder engagement tool.…”

“…Disclosure has limited value without stakeholder dialogue (Mia et al, ). The results of this paper show how social media is increasingly important in cultivating a fruitful dialogue with stakeholders.…”

“…In addition, social media usage is growing in the public sector, with the result of increasing the level of accountability (Bonsón, Royo, & Ratkai, ; Gesuele, ; Giacomini, ). Despite these premises, many studies focus on the private sector in order to assess the quality of disclosure (Song & Wen, ), whereas only a few studies examine other sectors, such as NGOs, the public sector, LGOs, SOEs and PUs (Mia, Hazelton, & Guthrie, ).…”

Greenhouse gas emissions disclosure by cities: the expectation gap

“…Stakeholders increasingly demand greater transparency from organisations on environmental, social and governance factors and other non-financial risks (Atan et al , 2018; PWC, 2015). This has motivated more organisations to provide sustainability information (Mia et al , 2018) and previously disclosing organisations to provide a greater volume of information (Dienes et al , 2016). This applies to both public and private organisations (Depoers et al , 2016; Goswami and Lodhia, 2014) and accountants play an important role (PWC, 2015; Qian et al , 2011).…”

Environmental disclosure and sentiment analysis: state of the art and opportunities for public-sector organisations

“…As far as we know, this is the first time SA has been applied to public organisations to study the interests and emotions of citizens towards LGOs' disclosure on environmental issues. This contributes to the call for studies on new challenges in disclosing systems (Lodhia, 2018;Parvez et al, 2018;Russell et al, 2017;Lai and Stacchezzini, 2019;Su arez-Rico et al, 2019;Giacomini et al, 2020).…”