Climate Change Disclosure and Sustainability Awards: Does Assurance Add Value? Evidence From the European Context

ABSTRACT

Sustainability awards have become an increasingly visible mechanism for recognising firms' environmental and social performance. This paper examines the individual and combined effects of climate change disclosure and the external assurance of sustainability reports on firms' likelihood of receiving awards for sustainability performance. Using a sample of 600 European companies for the period 2015–2022, we estimate linear and logistic regression models with both fixed and random effects. The findings show that sustainability assurance significantly enhances the comprehensiveness of climate change disclosure. Both climate disclosure and independent assurance increase the probability of winning sustainability awards. Moreover, assurance strengthens the signalling value of climate disclosure, thereby further increasing the likelihood of award recognition. However, the characteristics of the assurance provider do not influence these effects, although assurance tenure positively affects the probability of receiving sustainability awards. Robustness checks corroborate the stability of the results under different methodological specifications.