Through the rhetoric art: CEO incentives in sustainability sensitive industries

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationship between the readability of sustainability reports and chief executive officer (CEO) attributes, comprising monetary, non-monetary incentives and personal characteristics. The study is based on an international sample of companies operating in sustainability-sensitive industries during 2016–2018. The results prove that CEO monetary incentives, as well as CEO non-monetary incentives, negatively influence the readability of sustainability reports, revealed in a positive relationship with readability indexes, by providing reports with greater reading difficulty. Additionally, this study shows evidence about the relation of complementarity between these incentives. Other CEO characteristics have no significant effect on the readability of sustainability reports. This research sheds the light on the role of CEO incentives in obfuscating sustainability information to portray the company, operating in sustainability-sensitive industries, in a favorable image.