ONLINE SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING OF CHINESE UNIVERSITIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

This paper aims to assess and compare sustainability reporting (SR) practices of Chinese universities in seven regions of China from an online and comparative perspective. An integrated framework is used to assess and compare SR of Chinese universities. Content analysis is used for data analysis and a comparative approach is emphasised. It is found that all of the sample universities in the seven regions display a large amount of sustainability information on their official websites but none of them publish explicit sustainability reports. Surprisingly, the results show that the sample universities in South China although have the lowest average ranking, actually they perform much better than universities in the other six regions. SR differences are further discussed and explained. It is suggested that governments should play a key role in the SR of universities in China. The environmental dimension is important, thus sustainable development of the urban environment should be encouraged.