Corporate Characteristics and Sustainability Reporting: From the Lens of the Legitimacy Theory

This study intended to achieve two main objectives, which were to determine the level of sustainability reporting disclosure and to examine the relationship between corporate characteristics and sustainability reporting disclosure. This study used the latest Sustainability Framework introduced by Bursa Malaysia in 2015 as the basis for evaluating and measuring the level of sustainability reporting disclosure. 80 of the top 100 companies by market capitalization in the Malaysian Stock Market were taken as the sample. The published sustainability reports (within the annual reports or stand-alone sustainability reports) from 2017 to 2018 were reviewed and analyzed using the content analysis approach to test the objectives of this study. Drawing on the theory perspectives, corporate characteristics, such as firm size, industry type, and assurance statement practices, were industry type, and assurance statement practices had a significant positive relationship with the level of sustainability reporting disclosure. These findings are consistent with the legitimacy theory, which suggests that large companies in high risks industries with assurance statement practices tend to disclose higher sustainability information to legitimize their business operations and activities and maintain their image and reputation.