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The interconnected challenges of climate change and social inclusivity have placed unprecedented pressure on businesses to adopt responsible practices. While previous research has explored the individual impacts of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and diversity initiatives, there remains a dearth of comprehensive investigations into how these factors collectively influence carbon emission scores. Drawing on the legitimacy theory, we explore whether ESG and diversity scores predict global companies' carbon emission scores. As concerns about the environmental impact of businesses grow, understanding the relationships between ESG performance, diversity management, and carbon emissions becomes imperative for sustainable corporate practices.

The primary dataset for this study includes 1,268 worldwide firm-year data for 2021. The sample is subjected to missing data examination as a component of the filtration process. Data preprocessing is performed before machine learning analysis, including verifying missing data. Our research resulted in the final sample, which includes 627 worldwide firm data from 2021. Data regarding all publicly traded companies was obtained from Refinitiv Eikon.

Our findings showed that corporate carbon emission performance in global corporations is influenced by ESG performance and total diversity score.

Firms involve in ESG as well as diversity practices to be able to achieve sustainable success. Yet, the forecasting of carbon emissions based on ESG scores and diversity scores remains inadequately established due to conflicting findings and enigmas prevalent in the literature.

Utilising the resource dependency theory, this study investigates the impact of board interlocks (CEOs' interlocks, women board interlocks, independent board interlocks and total board interlocks) on carbon emissions performance in India.

This research applies varieties of regression methods comprising robust least squares, generalised method of moments and Heckman's regression on a final sample of 63 of India's top 200 Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed companies that voluntarily participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project's (CDP) Climate Change Program and disclose their climate change data for years 2013–2020.

We provide strong evidence for a strong negative association between CEOs' interlocks and women board interlocks on carbon emissions performance. Independent and total board interlocks are not found to significantly affect carbon emissions performance.

Our sample is restricted to the proportion of the top 200 BSE firms that voluntarily submit their carbon emissions data to CDP. Also, the study's focus is India, limiting the generalisation of our findings to other emerging economies.

The study's findings provide valuable insight for regulators and corporate board of directors on the important role of CEOs and women board who interlock with other firms in steering the carbon emissions reduction. Specifically, the corporate board of directors should encourage CEOs to build more networks through outside board memberships. The regulators should revisit the Companies Act, 2013 and the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulation to increase the number of multiple directorships of CEOs and women board of directors.

This study responds to the dearth of literature on the efficacy of board interlocks on carbon emissions performance in emerging economies.

This study seeks to investigate the impact of board attributes on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, along with exploring the mediating role of carbon emissions in this relationship.

To address this objective, the panel data approach was used to analyze the data were collected from 1,621 European companies from 2017 to 2021.

This study shows that board gender diversity, audit committee independence, expertise and board meeting attendance help enhance ESG performance. On the contrary, board size and composition do not affect ESG performance. The findings also showed that board gender diversity, audit committee independence, expertise and board meeting attendance are negatively related to carbon emissions performance. However, board size is related positively to carbon emissions performance. This indicates that the larger boards of directors may have diverse experiences that enhance the environmental performance of companies. Furthermore, the finding showed companies that contribute to lowering carbon emissions are more willing to improve their ESG performance. Also, carbon emissions mediate the relationship between the board's attributes and ESG performance.

The study's results have significant implications for firm managers in enhancing the efficiency of board decisions in determining environmental practices that matter to various groups of stakeholders. In addition, this study provides valuable input to regulators and policymakers regarding strengthening the regulations and controlling tools that enhance environmental performance.

In this study, the authors examine the relationships between market-based regulations and corporate carbon disclosure and carbon performance. The authors also investigate whether these relationships vary across emission-intensive and non-emission intensive industries.

The study sample consists of the world's 500 largest companies across most major industries over a recent five-year period. Country-specific random effect multiple regression analysis is used to test empirical models that predict relationships between market-based regulations and carbon disclosure and carbon performance.

Results indicate that market-based regulations significantly and positively affect corporate carbon performance. However, market-based regulations do not significantly affect corporate carbon disclosure. This study also finds that the association between regulatory pressures and carbon disclosure and carbon performance varies across emission-intensive and non-emission-intensive industries.

The findings of this study have key implications for policymakers, practitioners and future researchers in terms of understanding the factors that drive businesses to increase their carbon performance and disclosure. The study sample consists of only large firms, and future researchers can undertake similar studies with small and medium-sized firms.

The results of this study are expected to help business managers to identify the benefits of adopting market-based regulations. Regulators can use this study’s results to evaluate if market-based regulations effectively improve corporate carbon performance and disclosure. Furthermore, stakeholders may use this study to evaluate and improve their businesses' reporting of carbon disclosure and performance.

In contrast to current literature that has used command and control regulations as a proxy for regulation, this study uses market-based regulations as a proxy for climate change regulations. In addition, this study uses a more comprehensive measure of carbon disclosure and carbon performance compared to the previous studies. It also uses global multi-sector data from carbon disclosure project (CDP) in contrast to most current studies that use national data from annual reports of sample firms of specific sectors.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of carbon emission on accounting and market-based financial performance of Indian companies.

Firms reporting emission data on Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) are considered for empirical analysis and the data have been collected for the period from 2013 to 2019. The study adopts Heckman's regression model to control for self-selection bias and it also examines the moderating role of environmental sensitivity through industry-wise analysis. The results are also checked for potential endogeneity using generalized methods of moments estimation.

Primarily, the findings postulate a significant negative impact of carbon emissions on both measures of financial performance. Further, it also determines that environmentally sensitive firms are more exposed to such negative influence of emission compared to nonsensitive companies.

Current research will enhance the understanding of managers about the economic impact of carbon emission, especially in an economy where emissions are not completely regulated. The study provides an economic rationale to the industries to reduce emission volume. It will also assist regulators to draft environmental policies by considering environmental sensitivity. It should be noted that the study is based on the Indian firms that have reported emission data on the CDP during the study period.

The present study addresses one of the most important but less explored issues of environmental research in one of the largest emerging economies of the South Asian region. The study presents a comprehensive view by covering accounting as well as market-based indicators along with the moderating effect of environmental sensitivity.

The paper aims to develop a benchmarking framework to address issues such as supply chain complexity and visibility, geographical differences and non-standardized data, ensuring that the entire supply chain environmental impact (in terms of carbon) and resource use for all tiers, including domestic and import flows, are evaluated. Benchmarking has become an important issue in supply chain management practice. However, challenges such as supply chain complexity and visibility, geographical differences and non-standardized data have limited the development of approaches for evaluating performances of product supply chains. This industry-level benchmarking approach ensures that individual firms can compare their carbon emissions against other similarly structured firms.

Benchmarking has become an important issue in supply chain management practice. However, challenges such as supply chain complexity and visibility, geographical differences and non-standardized data have limited the development of approaches for evaluating performances of product supply chains. The paper aims to develop a benchmarking framework to address these issues, ensuring that the entire supply chain environmental impact (in terms of carbon) and resource use for all tiers, including domestic and import flows, are evaluated. This industry-level benchmarking approach ensures that individual firms can compare their carbon emissions against other similarly structured firms.

Supply chain carbon maps are developed as a means of producing industry-level benchmarks to set a measure for the environmental sustainability of product supply chains. The industry-level benchmark provides the first step for firms to manage the environmental performance, identify and target high carbon emission hot-spots and for cross-sectorial benchmarking.

The paper links the theoretical development of supply chain environmental system based on the Multi-Regional Input–Output model to the innovative development of supply chain carbon maps, such that an industry-level benchmarking framework is produced as a means of setting product supply chain carbon emissions benchmarks.

This study aims to examine whether good carbon performers disclose more carbon information overall than poor performers, and if yes, how firms select different types of carbon information to signal their genuine superior carbon performance.

The level of disclosure is measured based on content analysis of Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reports. The study sample consists of 487 US companies that voluntarily participated in the CDP survey from 2011 to 2012. The authors use the t-test and multiple regression models for analyses.

The results consistently indicate that firms with better carbon performance disclose a greater amount of overall carbon information, supporting the signalling theory. In addition, in contrast to previous studies that merely consider the overall disclosure level, the authors also investigate disclosure of each major aspect of carbon activities. The results show that good carbon performers disclose more key carbon items, such as goods and services that avoid greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, external verification and carbon accounting, to signal their true type.

This study has some limitations. The authors rely on CDP reports for analysis and focus on the largest companies in the USA. Caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other countries, smaller firms or voluntary carbon information disclosed in other communications channels.

Because carbon disclosure has already been moving from a voluntary to mandatory requirement in many jurisdictions, the format and content of CDP reports might be considered for a formal standalone GHG statement. Based on the results, the authors believe that there should be industry-specific disclosure guidelines, and more disclosure should be made at the project level.

In the context of climate change, this study provides support for the signalling theory by utilising the relationship between voluntary carbon disclosure and performance. The study also provides empirical evidence on how companies may use different types of carbon information to signal their underlying carbon performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of carbon performance on carbon disclosure among nonfinancial French-listed firms, while also considering the corporate board’s characteristics as a secondary objective.

This study uses a sample of Société des Bourses Françaises 120 Index (SBF-120) French-listed firms to investigate the effect of multiple carbon performance proxies on carbon disclosure based on random effects models for the period 2010–2021. Generalized method of moments regressions are used to encounter endogeneity problems.

Drawing on stakeholder theory, this paper finds that greater carbon performance leads to greater carbon disclosure. Given the growing societal awareness about climate-change issues, carbon-responsible firms are likely to disseminate relevant carbon-related information through disclosures to respond to the information demands of a varied stakeholder group. Coherent with signaling theory, large firms that undertake carbon-reduction initiatives tend to disclose more information about their enhanced carbon performance to equity participants to distinguish themselves and highlight their decarbonization efforts.

This study offers significant insights given that SBF-120 firms are involved in climate-change activities as a response to the growing institutional and societal pressure to perform better and disclose reliable environmental information in their sustainability reports.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the correlation between a company’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and its actual carbon performance. Additionally, the study investigates how female decision-makers may influence this relationship as moderators.

This study uses a data set consisting of 1,258 observations from companies listed on the STOXX Europe 600 index between 2009 and 2021. The study applies the ordinary least squares technique to investigate the connection between carbon reduction initiatives and actual carbon performance, taking into account the potential impact of board and executive gender diversity. To ensure the reliability of the findings, subsample analysis and a two-step generalized method of moments technique were used.

The results show a significant negative association between a firm’s commitment to environmental initiatives and its carbon emission intensity. Furthermore, the study explores the moderating effect of board and executive gender diversity on this relationship and finds that gender diversity has a significant negative impact on the relationship between emissions reduction initiatives and carbon emissions.

The study has practical implications for corporate sustainability efforts. It highlights the importance of implementing carbon reduction initiatives to effectively mitigate carbon emissions. This emphasizes the need for sustainable business strategies that prioritize environmental initiatives. Additionally, the study underscores the positive impact of gender diversity in leadership positions on carbon reduction efforts. Policymakers and organizations can leverage these findings to promote gender diversity and enhance sustainability practices.

It provides evidence-based insights for policymakers to develop specific policies and action plans in priority areas such as climate change and emissions reduction. It also highlights the positive influence of gender diversity in corporate leadership on environmental initiatives, promoting inclusivity and equality in sustainability practices.

This study brings originality by investigating the direct impact of a company’s carbon reduction initiatives on its carbon performance. It also explores the moderating effect of board and executive gender diversity on this relationship. The study provides evidence-based insights for policymakers and applies neo-institutional theory to analyze the interplay between carbon reduction initiatives, carbon emissions and gender diversity in executive and board positions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of logistics performance on the carbon (CO2) emissions of Balkan countries.

Fixed-effects panel regression analysis is used to estimate the causal relationship between CO2 emissions and logistic performances of Balkan countries. Logistics performance is measured by logistics performance index (LPI) which was published by the World Bank in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 and used for ranking countries by means of their logistics performance. LPI is based on six main indicators: customs procedures, logistics costs and the quality of the infrastructure for overland and maritime transport. As a measure of carbon emissions of sampled countries, the natural logarithm of carbon dioxide emission per capita is used in this study.

The results obtained reveal that there is a positive and significant relationship between logistics performance and CO2 performances of the sampled Balkan countries.

This study is based on only 11 Balkan countries. In this sense, the data used in the analysis is limited.

Considering the important geostrategic position of the Balkan region, logistics sector has an important role for the development of the countries in that region. In this sense, the findings of this study may provide useful insights for policymakers to achieve sustainable economic development. Furthermore, as far as the authors know, this is the first study that focuses on the relationship between logistics performance and carbon emissions of Balkan countries.