Author Identifier
Ummara Fatima: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1827-8943
Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Thesis
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
School
School of Business and Law
First Supervisor
Jaime Yong
Second Supervisor
Rashid Zaman
Third Supervisor
Tricia Ong
Abstract
Climate change has emerged as one of the most substantial and systemic financial threats to businesses, investors, and the global economy, posing unprecedented risks to biodiversity and jeopardising the long-term stability of economic and ecological systems. Rising global temperatures, alongside the growing frequency of droughts, floods, and wildfires, are exerting severe pressure on social and economic structures. In response, regulatory bodies have intensified mandates for climate-related disclosures, exemplified by the SEC’s 2024 climate disclosure guidelines, the TCFD recommendations, AASB S2, and IFRS S2, which are accelerating the shift toward a low-carbon economy by reshaping corporate practices and promoting decision-useful, forward-looking disclosures. Despite these developments, many firms continue to underreport or provide unreliable climate disclosures, raising concerns about their credibility and consistency. Thereby, the disclosure of forward-looking climate-related risks is important, and so is investigating the factors that influence it. This thesis examines the determinants of corporate climate risk disclosure through three interrelated essays.
The first essay presents a systematic review of 249 peer-reviewed articles (2003–2025) from Web of Science and Scopus, integrating bibliometric mapping via R Biblioshiny and VOSviewer to map the scholarly structure and thematic evolution of this field. It synthesises the roles of regulatory frameworks, industry exposure, stakeholder pressures, and governance mechanisms in shaping disclosure practices and their implications for firm performance, reporting quality, and operational outcomes. Importantly, while outlining several avenues for future research, the first essay identifies two particularly underexplored determinants, Environmental Management Control Systems (EMCS) and strategic deviation, which highlight critical gaps in the literature and serve as the conceptual basis for the subsequent essays. To measure climate risk disclosure in the second and third essays, this thesis draws on a large sample of US-listed firms (2006–2022) and employs state-of-the-art Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) based textual analysis of Item 1A of 10-K filings. The second essay findings demonstrate that well-structured EMCS encompassing—structure, policies, targets, and actions—significantly enhance climate risk disclosure, particularly for transition risks, by reducing firm risk profiles and fostering environmental innovation. Conversely, the third essay findings reveal that strategic deviation, capturing deviations in resource allocation relative to industry norms, significantly impairs climate risk disclosure, especially for transition risks, through heightened managerial obfuscation and aggravated firm-specific risk. These adverse effects are most pronounced among firms with opaque communication and weak external monitoring but are mitigated following the adoption of global climate frameworks.
Collectively, the three essays advance methodological, theoretical, and practical understanding of corporate climate risk disclosure, offering actionable insights for regulators, investors, and corporate leaders seeking to enhance transparency and resilience in a rapidly evolving regulatory and environmental landscape.
Access Note
Access to this thesis is embargoed until 12th February 2031
DOI
10.25958/hk0e-kh80
Recommended Citation
Fatima, U. (2026). Firm-level determinants of corporate climate risk disclosure: Evidence from three essays. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/hk0e-kh80