Do environmental-related disclosures help enhance investment recommendations? UK-based evidence

Purpose - Using a sample of UK FTSE 350 companies continuously listed in the period 2007-2011, this paper aims to investigate the impact of the quality and quantity of corporate environmental disclosure on analysts recommendations. Design/methodology/approach - The study adopted a method based on that developed by Beck et al. (2010). The "CONT" approach measures information diversity, content and volume. It involves dual qualitative and quantitative measurement, which is suitable for the purpose of this paper. Findings - The findings suggest that the quality of environmental disclosure is associated with more favourable buy recommendations. Mere volume of disclosure is insufficient for effective signalling about environmental strategies. Further tests show that only discretionary quality disclosure that is influenced by managerial intervention receives optimistic recommendation, suggesting that analysts are more likely to give better recommendation when managers have a higher level of discretion in their disclosures. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the academic literature by empirically examining the association between sell-side analyst recommendations on both innate and discretionary components of environmental disclosures (quality and volume) within the UK context. This is a significant extension of the existing literature, which has focused on the related association between analyst recommendations and corporate social responsibility, mainly measured by corporate social responsibility ratings or a dummy variable reflecting the existence of supplementary corporate social responsibility reports in different international setting. The topic is of interest to contemporary accounting scholars and responds to calls for more research into how analysts use nonfinancial data such as environmental data in making recommendations.