Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I enjoyed reading this article. I think it is well-structured and well written. The only suggestion that I could make would be to separate the section "conclusions and discussion" in two separate sections. I suggest first discussing the empirical results of your study ("Discussion") and then concluding the paper by summarizing in a more detailed way your research findings and explaining how your research contributes to the current academic debates on the issue under consideration, as well as the practical field ("Conclusion"). It could be interesting to learn more about the broder  "outcomes of the study" (lines 489-504). If you could name some concrete case studies or present some statistics, it would be perfect.

Author Response

I enjoyed reading this article. I think it is well-structured and well written.

First, we would like to thank you for your kind comments regarding our manuscript. We appreciate your helpful suggestions regarding the first version of our study. Your suggestions have helped to improve the quality of our work. Below, we explain how we dealt with them (in italics). We hope that we have addressed all of your suggestions satisfactorily. We would like to inform you that we have preferred not to prepare a track-change version, as recommended, because the entire paper have gone revision based on our responses and English-editing.

 

The only suggestion that I could make would be to separate the section "conclusions and discussion" in two separate sections. I suggest first discussing the empirical results of your study ("Discussion") and then concluding the paper by summarizing in a more detailed way your research findings and explaining how your research contributes to the current academic debates on the issue under consideration, as well as the practical field ("Conclusion").

Thank you for your suggestion. We have now divided the section of conclusions and discussion to two separate sections including our discussions in a new section 4.4. We have followed your suggestions for the contents of these two sections. 

 

It could be interesting to learn more about the broder  "outcomes of the study" (lines 489-504). If you could name some concrete case studies or present some statistics, it would be perfect.

We agree with your comments. Unfortunately, we do not have any case studies or statistics to support our claims in the final part of our conclusions. We have added this point to our suggestions for future studies.

Reviewer 2 Report

It's my pleasure to comment the article. The topic of the study is an interesting issue. There are some suggestions.

1)     Tobin’s Q is utilized as a proxy for firm performance as the resource-based view of the firm implies a positive relationship between environmental disclosure and financial performance. However, market measures like Tobin’s Q reflect forward-looking aspects of a firm’s performance while accounting-based measures like return on assets and return on equity show backward-looking predictions as they provide a view of a company’s performance in prior years. That would be quite informative to utilize both market and accounting-based performance measures as they present different pictures and complement one another (See for instance; Simionescu, L.N., Gherghina, Ş.C., Tawil, H. et al. Does board gender diversity affect firm performance? Empirical evidence from Standard & Poor’s 500 Information Technology Sector. Financial Innovation 7, 52 (2021)). [234-243]

2)     The BGD proxies might be endogenous (influenced by other variables; omitted variables) or jointly determined with the disclosure variable (reverse causality or simultaneity). The authors stated that all the covariates are lagged by one period to take potential endogeneity issues into account. Does lagging all the right-hand side variables by one period alleviate the endogeneity concerns? (See for example; Reed, W.R. (2015), On the Practice of Lagging Variables to Avoid Simultaneity. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 77: 897-905). [253-275]

3)     If the answer to the question raised in 3. is no, what is the estimator that takes into account the feedback mechanism that BGD and carbon emission disclosure? (e.g., Nuber, Claudio; Velte, Patrick (2021): Board gender diversity and carbon emissions: European evidence on curvilinear relationships and critical mass, Business Strategy and the Environment, ISSN 1099-0836, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, Vol. 30, Iss. 4, pp. 1958-1992). [253-275]

4)     By drawing on the implications of the signaling theory, Wu and Li (2022) show that environmental disclosure can positively relate to a firm’s financial performance. Might there be a simultaneity between carbon emission disclosure and financial performance? If so, how could it be handled? (Refer to Haixia Wu & Jianping Li (2022) The relationship between environmental disclosure and financial performance: mediating effect of economic development and information penetration, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2022.2072355 and Ullah, S., Akhtar, P., & Zaefarian, G. (2018). Dealing with endogeneity bias: The generalized method of moments (GMM) for panel data. Industrial Marketing Management, 71, 69-78, DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2017.11.010). [263-267]

5)     As evident from Table 2, the control variable R&D Intensity has both a minimum value and a median value of 0. That means that some firms do not incur R&D expenses. Does “0” herein stand for those firms who have not incurred research and development expenses or for R&D expenses not reported (as is the case with some databases)? If the latter is the case, perhaps a dummy variable for missing R&D expenses shall be created and included in models (Refer to Hanlon, M., Rajgopal, S., & Shevlin, T. (2003). Are executive stock options associated with future earnings? Journal of accounting and economics, 36(1-3), 3-43). [293-294]

6)     The authors reported the results of the Pearson Correlation Matrix to check for multi-collinearity. That would be better if the Variance Inflation Factors for each of the select covariates be reported to check for the issue of multi-collinearity. Also, that would be better to include signs along the correlation coefficients to see in advance whether included regressors and the dependent variable are significantly correlated or not. [311-312]

7)     How do authors interpret the statistically significant negative impact that the variable Legal Origin has on the dependent variable? [333-334] & [401-402] & [477-478]

8)     The authors stated that country, industry, and year effects are included to control for their respective effects on the dependent variable. An F test can be conducted to see if there exists significant year, country, and industry effects so that their inclusion is warranted. Also, How about the time-invariant firm-specific effects? Do they exist? If so, how to control for these unobserved characteristics? [268-269]

9)     The authors included the variable Leverage to control for financial distress. Studies that investigate the relationship between a firm’s ESG (i.e., Environment, Social, and Governance) and its performance-including disclosure studies- include a proxy for the systematic risk of a firm too, which is often proxied by Beta. Is Leverage sufficient to control for firm risk alone? How about the systematic component of firm risk? [214-253]. (See for instance; Garcia-Castro, R., Arino, M. A., & Canela, M. A. (2010). Does social performance really lead to financial performance? Accounting for endogeneity. Journal of Business Ethics, 92(1), 107-126).

10)  There is a non-recurring minor spelling issue at [338] with “……ate the firm level…..” and a verb at [83] with “………less likely to confirm to traditional practices…….” That does not fit the context and thereafter shall be replaced with the verb “conform”.

All the above comments are minor and as such their incorporation warrants that the paper herein is published.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for sending your paper to the journal. The paper is interesting, but still it needs work in the following sections in order to be in accepted level:

1- The research gap is still unclear in the paper

2-In the theoretical issues it is not supported that how and why the gender diversity may affect to carbon disclosure

3-The theoretical issues and literature should be improved by the most recent studies some are listed below:

-Are gender and cultural diversities on board related to corporate CO2 emissions?

-Corporate governance: Does it matter management of carbon emission performance? An empirical analyses of Indian companies

-The relationship between corporate governance and financial reporting transparency

-Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure

-The relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and internet financial reporting in Iran

 

 

 

4-

Author Response

Thank you very much for sending your paper to the journal. The paper is interesting, but still it needs work in the following sections in order to be in accepted level:

First, we would like to thank you for finding our manuscript interesting. We appreciate your helpful suggestions regarding the first version of our study. Your suggestions have helped to improve the quality of our work. Below, we explain how we dealt with them (in italics). We hope that we have addressed all of your suggestions satisfactorily. We would like to inform you that we have preferred not to prepare a track-change version, as recommended, because the entire paper have gone revision based on our responses and English-editing.

 

1- The research gap is still unclear in the paper

Thank you for your suggestion. We have revised our introduction to identify the perspective we have tried to fill in a research gap in the literature.

 

2-In the theoretical issues it is not supported that how and why the gender diversity may affect to carbon disclosure.

We have revised and extended our Section 2.1. to address your concerns regarding the theoretical framework.

 

3-The theoretical issues and literature should be improved by the most recent studies some are listed below:

-Are gender and cultural diversities on board related to corporate CO2 emissions?

-Corporate governance: Does it matter management of carbon emission performance? An empirical analyses of Indian companies

-The relationship between corporate governance and financial reporting transparency

-Gender diversity, board independence, environmental committee and greenhouse gas disclosure

-The relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and internet financial reporting in Iran

Thank you very much for suggesting important studies that support our theoretical discussion. However, we were not able to cite all of them but selected those directly related to our investigation.

Reviewer 4 Report

First of all, I would like to thank you for choosing me as a reviewer
I really enjoyed reading this paper, the authors did a great job!
I have only two recommendations to improve the work:

- I suggest that you find a more appropriate place for Table 7. which is currently in the conclusion section of your paper

- the literature review should be expanded

I wish the authors all the best!

 

 

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank you for choosing me as a reviewer. I really enjoyed reading this paper, the authors did a great job!

First, we are happy to hear that you enjoyed reading our study. We would also like to thank you for your comments. We appreciate your helpful recommendations regarding our study. They helped to improve the quality of our work. Below, we explain how we have dealt with them (in italics). We hope that we have addressed all of your suggestions satisfactorily. We would like to inform you that we have preferred not to prepare a track-change version, as recommended, because the entire paper have gone revision based on our responses and English-editing.

I have only two recommendations to improve the work:

- I suggest that you find a more appropriate place for Table 7. which is currently in the conclusion section of your paper

We agree with you on this concern. We have replaced Table 7 in the appropriate place.

 

- the literature review should be expanded

We have extended the literature review by adding more studies that are relevant from the recent literature as well as discussing stakeholder theory.

 

I wish the authors all the best!

We would like to thank you for reading and commenting on our manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for sending your revised manuscript, you affected my comments on the paper