Korean firm’s voluntary disclosure of climate change information and CEO’s educational background

Abstract

Climate change is now recognized as the major risk factor worldwide, and the firms are facing some pressure from various stakeholders to disclose the climate change information. Most of the climate change information disclosure is now voluntarily done by the firms themselves, not mandated by governmental regulations, thus the decision whether to voluntarily disclose this information differs from each firm. In this thesis, I hypothesized that the CEO’s educational backgrounds are the one that can explain this difference. Using Korean firm data, I tested the hypotheses by examining firms’ responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). The results show that Korean firms led by CEOs with higher level of education, degree from abroad, engineering major are more likely to participate in climate change disclosure than are other firms, but less likely to participate when led by social science major CEOs than are other firms. This thesis contributes to the literature by extending the Korean literature on CER activities, and by suggesting CEO’s educational background as one of the explanatory variables for Korean firm’s climate change related strategic decision.