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Abstrak


Environmental Reporting Practices: An Empirical Study in Indonesia


Oleh :
Djoko Suhardjanto - 131843290 - Fak. Ekonomi dan Bisnis

This study explores the demand for and the supply of Indonesia listed companies’ environmental information. This topic is very important given Indonesia’s massive environmental problems. This thesis compares and contrasts the restricted (narrow) and unrestricted (broader) variants of stakeholder theory to describe the environmental reporting practices in Indonesia. Phase 1 creates an initial environmental index using 35 items from theGlobal Reporting Initiative (GRI) template.This is adapted for Indonesia conditions by weighing user ratings and press coverage priorities to develop the IERw index. Results from the respondents’ surveys (using a 7 Likert scale) show that all 35 GRI items are highly rated (overall mean of 5.46) while Indonesian press coverage demonstrates far greater variance in priorities. Impact of Using Water and Incidents and Fines are the highest rated environmental items. Businesspeople and regulators rate economic items (mean = 5.19) higher than broader items (mean = 4.83). This finding is consistent with restricted stakeholder theory (Ullmann, 1985). Whereas environmentalists, academicians and the press consider economic and broader items of equal importance. These latter findings are consistent with the unrestricted variant of stakeholder theory (Brown, Tower and Taplin, 2004; Herbohn, 2005). Phase 2 applies the weighted IERw index as the benchmark to analyze Indonesian listed companies’ annual reports. The key finding is that the IERw disclosure level is very low (on average o nly 4.36% of the IERw index items were in the annual report). o nly 35% of Indonesian listed companies disclosed any environmental information. Overall, the empirical findings have implications for both the key stakeholders and the preparers of companies’ annual reports. The results suggest there is demand for far more environmental disclosures. The evidence highlights that Indonesian listed companies fail to meet Indonesian stakeholders’ demands by not communicating environmental information. Environmental reporting is cleary not yet a mainstream element of company reporting in Indonesia. Moreover, consistent with previous studies Industry Grouping and Firm’s Size are significant predictors for companies’ environmental disclosure(Gray et al., 2001; Haniffa and Cooke, 2002; Milne, 2002; Gao et al., 2005). Manufacturing and large Indonesian listed companies are more likely to communicate environmental disclosures. As there are no clear environmental guidelines, the IERw index is very useful in creating a better understanding of environmental disclosures in Indonesia. This thesis provides evidence to users of annual reports, to the government and other regulatory bodies regarding the extent to which the high demand for and the low supply of environmental disclosure reveals a large expectation gap. The thesis’ findings are a vital consideratioin in the call for mandatory environmental regulation/legislation, especially given the Indonesian critical environmental problems.