The Influence of Voluntary Environmental Disclosure on the Environmental Impact of Waste Reduction Activities

Using the Attention Based View (ABV) as a theoretical framework, this study investigates the moderating influence of firm voluntary environmental disclosure on the effectiveness of waste avoidance and waste management to improve two environmental metrics that have received differing levels of attention: carbon emissions and water usage. Employing a panel fixed effects estimation strategy, the results provide two key findings: (1) differing effectiveness of waste reduction strategies to reduce environmental harm and (2) voluntary disclosure moderates the effectiveness of waste reduction strategies to reduce environmental harm, though not always beneficially. Voluntary disclosure improves the environmental benefit of waste avoidance while attenuating that of waste management. Moreover, the moderating influence is more pronounced for water usage, showing that concerns receiving less external attention may benefit more from internal changes in managerial attention.