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The Sustainability Reporting in the Municipalities: A Study in Portugal

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Preparing for a Sustainable Future

Abstract

Sustainability practices are increasingly used and the target of concern by society in general. The citizens are increasingly more interested in environmental, economic, and social issues. The way in which this sustainability is promoted by public entities makes it possible to assess the extent to which society's concerns are addressed by these entities. The municipalities, which are the main objective of this study, are framed within the public sector, and they play a fundamental role in the daily life of the population, having as their main mission to implement policies that defend the interests and needs of the population, through the availability efficient and transversal public services.

Knowing the importance of the municipalities for all aspects of society and the way they influence it, concerns about reporting information on sustainability have increased in recent years, giving special attention to environmental, economic, and social factors. This work was developed with the objective of evaluating how much and what type of information on sustainability is reported in the various information disclosure documents presented by the municipalities in the north of Portugal. In addition to assessing the level of disclosure of public entities, we seek to identify the main factors that determine this disclosure.

Despite the importance of the topic under study, there are still very few works that analyze this subject. This research aims to contribute to overcoming this lack of study and also to verify the weaknesses and strengths of disclosure regarding sustainability considering the information disclosed by municipalities of the northern region of Portugal on their websites.

The present investigation analyzes and quantifies the matter of disclosure of sustainability in 86 Municipalities belonging to the North region of Portugal, using the analysis of their web pages and investigating the possible explanatory factors for their level of disclosure. After identifying the explanatory factors, namely the sociodemographic, socioeconomic, fiscal, and political factors, the disclosure index was prepared. The results obtained suggest that the disclosure of sustainability is average, as can be seen by the result that 56.77% of the Municipalities disclose information. The category that presents the greatest disclosure is economic, followed by social, general, contracting services and public works, and, finally, environmental. The last presents a visible lack of disclosure on the web pages, thus establishing an incentive for municipalities to improve their performance systems regarding the information made available in this particular area, which is increasingly crucial.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, Coimbra Business School, ISCAC, Coimbra, Portugal

    Cristina Góis, Maria Costa & Clara Viseu

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  1. Cristina Góis
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  2. Maria Costa
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  1. Social Responsibility Research Network, UK

    David Crowther

  2. Social Responsibility Research Network, UK

    Shahla Seifi

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Góis, C., Costa, M., Viseu, C. (2023). The Sustainability Reporting in the Municipalities: A Study in Portugal. In: Crowther, D., Seifi, S. (eds) Preparing for a Sustainable Future. Approaches to Global Sustainability, Markets, and Governance. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2456-1_8

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