Do Corporate Carbon Policies Enhance Legitimacy? A Social Media Perspective

Geoprocessing Applied to the Assessment of Carbon Storage and Sequestration in a Brazilian Medium-Sized City

The emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) is a cause for concern when seeking sustainable development in view of global warming. The multiple ecosystem services associated with land use and land cover are at the center of the global climate agenda, both as a mitigation and adaptation strategy to climate change and growing urbanization. Among these services is carbon storage and sequestration (CSS). It can remove GHG carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the form of organic matter, a natural carbon stock. Thus, to design projects that guarantee sustainable development, it is necessary to use metrics that can quantify the impact of sequestration on natural carbon stocks. We aimed to implement the InVEST CSS methodology in the region of Itaperuna-RJ (Brazil) to quantify the net change in carbon storage over time (sequestration and loss) between 2015 and 2020. The obtained total difference in carbon stocks between the analyzed maps was −39,103.56 × 103 kg C, which has an equivalent social cost of carbon of USD 16,559,187.69. This social value represents the social damage caused by releasing that amount of carbon into the atmosphere. This main result brings an important application for validating the InVEST CSS methodology in Brazil. Furthermore, it points out parameters that can help elaborate sustainable development policies.

Components of Countries’ Regulative Dimensions and Voluntary Carbon Disclosures

The previous literature has demonstrated that countries’ regulative contexts positively influence voluntary corporate carbon disclosures. However, little research has been conducted into the relationship between the different components of the regulative dimension of institutions and voluntary carbon disclosure. Drawing on the theoretical framework of New Institutional Sociology (NIS), this study examines the influence of the different components of the regulative context (rules; monitoring mechanisms and punishments; rewards) both on firms’ propensity to disclose carbon information and on the quality of disclosures. Based on a global sample of 2176 companies that participated in the 2015 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) climate report, this paper uses the Heckman two-stage approach in an attempt to model firms’ decisions as to whether to disclose carbon information, as well as the quality of said disclosures. The results show that the regulative components positively influence firms’ decisions to voluntarily disclose carbon data. They also show that the quality of disclosures is positively affected by climate-related rules and rewards, but that it is not influenced by monitoring mechanisms and punishments related to climate change. This paper is the first to take the step of addressing the components of the climate-related regulative pillar of institutions in the same regression setting.

Non-Financial Information versus Financial as a Key to the Stakeholder Engagement: A Higher Education Perspective

In light of the increased demand for greater accountability and legitimacy, new disclosure mechanisms based on non-financial transparency have emerged. Universities cannot be left behind with respect to these social demands. In addition, continuous competition in excellence is driving higher education organizations to exhibit a greater visibility of their results, necessarily incorporating more non-financial aspects to boost stakeholder engagement. The novelty of this work lies in the analysis of the real state of non-financial vs. financial information in both public and private universities and in the exploration of their influence on stakeholder online engagement. To this end, a content analysis of the universities’ web pages and Facebook profiles was conducted, and a multivariable linear regression analysis was performed. The main results show that private and larger universities that lead Webometrics for Google Scholar Citations, and those that have gradually been adopting financial reporting, are the most interested in implementing Facebook as a two-way communication strategy. It seems that stakeholders react more to financial transparency and, therefore, universities still prefer financial disclosure to improve accountability.

Stakeholder Legitimization of the Provision of Emergency Centralized Accommodations to Displaced Persons

Sudden population influxes into cities—such as those seen during post-disaster migration—place unexpected demands on the urban housing system. Decisions made during these influxes are often controversial, potentially hindering the ability of the organizations involved to respond. This study’s objective was to explore strategies (e.g., types of information shared and types of accommodation chosen) that can be used during decision-making processes when providing emergency accommodations to increase stakeholder acceptance, and thus lead to sustainable institutional responses. This study specifically sought to shed light on how, during the Refugee Crisis in Germany of 2015 and 2016, stakeholders legitimized decisions made to provide centralized emergency accommodations to displaced persons. Making this study possible were 25 semi-structured interviews with utility, government, nonprofit, and company employees involved in the provision of centralized accommodations for displaced persons. Interviews were conducted in 2016 and underwent a qualitative analysis. Results indicate that stakeholders primarily legitimized the provision of centralized accommodations based on convictions of right and wrong (moral legitimacy), while they legitimized decisions to not provide such accommodations based on their understanding and experience of practical barriers (cultural-cognitive legitimacy). Recommendations arising from this study include the following: provide information to stakeholders about accommodations’ livability (to gain consequential legitimacy) and past successes (to gain comprehensibility legitimacy), adapt regulations to help stakeholders use procedural legitimacy, and prefer fully renovated buildings or modular housing to buildings with no major renovations or container housing (to gain consequential rather than procedural legitimacy).