The nexus between board diversity and environmental reporting: A systematic review of corporate governance literature

Environmental reporting has become a key tool used by firms to communicate their environmental efforts, performance, risks, and initiatives to stakeholders. Scholarly interest in understanding how corporate governance mechanisms impact the environmental disclosure practices of businesses has grown significantly due to stakeholder expectations, heightened regulatory pressures, and global sustainability frameworks (Cucari et al., 2018). However, research on the impact of board diversity on environmental reporting is still dispersed across diversity dimensions and methodological approaches, with the majority of studies using a single proxy, usually gender, to represent a multidimensional construct. This study conducts a systematic review, applying the PRISMA methodology, to determine which aspects of board diversity have been studied. Furthermore, it determines the extent to which gender diversity has been utilised as a single proxy and which dimensions remain underexplored. The findings of the study demonstrated a disproportionate concentration on board gender diversity. Unlike prior reviews that record how board diversity has been measured, this is the first to quantify the degree of single-versus multidimensional approach. This study highlights a construct validity problem rather than a simple coverage gap. The study proposes directions for future research avenues that take a more thorough, multifaceted conceptualisation of the topic.