NEW TRENDS IN CORPORATE REPORTING: INFORMATION ON THE CARBON FOOTPRINT IN SPAIN

In accordance with the Kyoto Protocol, Spain has created a National Carbon Footprint Registry by Royal Decree 163/2014. This constitutes a pioneering initiative to help Spanish companies give visibility to their efforts in reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Hence, this paper explores the motivation of Spanish companies to register their carbon footprints with a higher degree of scope. We identify the characteristics of the first Spanish companies that registered their carbon footprint through a logistic regression model (logit). The study concludes that organizations are more likely to register a higher scope if they do not belong to the manufacturing sector, if they are relatively new, and have a culture of environmental transparency.


INTRODUCTION
In an environment of international concern about the adverse effects of climate change, many institutions and organizations have multiplied their conservation efforts and adopted measures that provide in-depth knowledge of the dynamics and impacts of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In this context, the carbon footprint is one of the most widely recognized indicators in the international sphere (Schneider & Samaniego, 2009). According to the Spanish Office for Climate Change (2015), carbon footprint (CF) is defined as "the totality of greenhouse gases emitted by direct or indirect effect by an individual, organization, event, or product." The carbon footprint quantifies the GHGs (carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), nitrous oxide (N 2 O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6 )), which are expelled into the atmosphere, directly or indirectly, as a product of the various activities carried out by a company or a person or in the lifecycle of a product.
GHG emissions by a company can be measured at three levels (scope 1: direct emissions, scope 2: indirect emissions, and scope 3: related activity emissions). A company's carbon footprint is recorded in the Registry by registering either "1 and 2" or "1, 2 and 3" scopes. For the purposes of this research, "1, 2 and 3" represents a carbon footprint measure with a greater scope. Therefore, this paper explores the probability that the decision of Spanish companies that have recorded their 2013 carbon footprint using this greater scope (1, 2 and 3) can be attributed to factors of a financial and environmental nature (Segura, Ferruz, Gargallo, & Salvador, 2013). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of the first Spanish companies that used the National Carbon Footprint Registry to disseminate information.
Additionally, through the study and analysis of the various pronouncements on climate change, this paper is intended to contribute, from an academic perspective, to the identification of opportunities to mitigate the adverse effects of GHG, focusing especially on the Spanish business sector. Consequently, this study sheds light on the transparency and sustainable behavior of companies through the identification of the characteristics that allow organizations to be more transparent. Spain is an interesting setting for this study given that the literature has shown that its business fabric is very sensitive to issues of corporate social responsibility (Garrido-Miralles, Zorio-Grima, & García-Benau, 2016), and, therefore, it is expected that companies would also be inclined to adopt new corporate reporting policies, including disclosing their information through the National Carbon Footprint Registry. For countries in Latin America, with many natural resources and where a tendency already exists in some countries to disclose the carbon footprint of listed companies (Cordova et al., 2018), the creation of national registers such as the Spanish one could assist in extending this trend of respect for the environment among smalland medium-sized enterprises.
Based on the results, our study concludes that the companies that are more likely to register a calculation that measures the greater scope of their carbon footprint (scopes 1, 2 and 3) are characterized by not belonging to the manufacturing industrial sector, having existed only a relatively short time, and, mainly, having a culture of environmental transparency that is made explicit through the practice of annually disclosing a sustainability or corporate social responsibility report.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The following section describes the seriousness of the situation with respect to climate change and the emission of greenhouse gases as well as business strategies aimed at sustainable development.
Next, we pay special attention to the market for GHG emission rights and the creation of the National Carbon Footprint Registry.
The following sections describe the hypotheses, sample, and methodology of our empirical study. Following that, we present the results of the exploratory analysis and its interpretation.
Finally, the main conclusions of this study, its limitations, and possible future lines of research are discussed.

CLIMATE CHANGE, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, AND SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS STRATEGY
From a sustainability standpoint, humanity faces significant challenges that must be addressed, one of which is adaptation to climate change (IPPC, 2014;Córdova, Zorio-Grima, & Merello, 2018 Similarly, the following are the emissions by sector from the main GHG emitters (Graph 2): When analyzing GHG emissions from a business management perspective, it can be argued that investors are concerned about the carbon disclosure of organizations. Thus, in the last decade, interest in the risks caused by climate change has grown on a large scale among both internal and external investors (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2012). The study by Tauringana and Chithambo (2014) reveals that GHG measurement and reporting procedures have had a positive effect on the disclosure of GHG emissions, and the results suggest that governance mechanisms, such as size and property concentration, as well as other variables, such as financial and industrial clearance, have had a significant effect on GHG disclosure. In fact, we are currently seeing growing pressure from investors and other interest groups, who demand complete information from companies that respond to climate change.
This information is useful to investors in the decision-making process. Thus, companies have found new channels to transmit not only information related to economic operations, but also non-financial aspects related to carbon. In this sense, two wellknown institutions, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), propose initiatives to organize and better guide approaches to the information requested from companies at the economic, social, and environmental levels (Matsumura, Prakash, & Vera-Muñoz, 2014).
The GRI has become one of the major protocols for the preparation of sustainability reports, and there are numerous studies that use company social responsibility reports that apply the GRI as a reference. Therefore, the preparation of these reports has clearly enabled organizations to demonstrate their social and environmental commitments to the community new allocation approach proposes that organizations will have to buy their rights in an auction. This is because the European Union has announced that it is planning to phase out free allocation by 2027, considering that auctions would be the most transparent allocation procedure, according to the "polluter pays" principle (European Commission, 2013).

CARBON FOOTPRINT REGISTRY
The Carbon Disclosure Project 2009 report (Ecodes, 2015) acknowledges that the three mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, the clean development mechanism (CDM), joint implementation,

METHODOLOGY
This is an empirical survey, based on the exploration of the characteristics of Spanish companies that published their carbon footprint in the Spanish National Carbon Footprint Registry. This disclosure is considered one of the most relevant indicators of the fight against climate change, whose calculation is reflected in the recording of a "1 and 2" or "1, 2 and 3" scope.
This study used the database of the Spanish National Carbon Footprint Registry, which, as of May 2015, reported a list of 150 carbon footprints from 125 organizations, each of which report their respective sector, "1 and 2" or "1, 2 and 3" scope, year, and type of footprint. This information is summarized in

Hypotheses
This study collects evidence from similar studies in order to establish the a priori relationship between the "scope" of the carbon footprint report and certain variables that characterize the companies registered in the Spanish Carbon Footprint Registry, into which registration is voluntary. The independent variables used were the industry to which the companies belong, their profitability, the degree of leverage, an index of disclosure of their environmental behavior, and the age and size of the firm, measured according to their volume of assets. Although there is evidence of the type of relationship between the mentioned variables, as described below, these were only taken as a reference, as the hypotheses of this study have a more descriptive than confirmatory purpose.
In related studies (Amran, Periasamy, & Zulkafli, 2014;Rosa, Lunkes, Hein, Vogt, & Degenhart, 2014), evidence has been found that companies in potentially polluting sectors tend to declare more details of their environmental behavior. The causes that underlie this behavior can be associated with the existence of more demanding regulatory frameworks in these industrial branches, the public scrutiny to which companies are exposed for the same event, and the purpose of demonstrating responsible behavior as a strategy for competitiveness and legitimacy in the community (Burgwal & Vieira, 2014 Based on the scientific literature, it is considered important to explore the theoretical relationship between the profitability of firms and their disclosure of environmental information. The results are inconclusive (Hahn & Kühnen, 2013). The investigations by Neu, Warsame, and Pedwellet (1998) and Cormier and Magnan (2003) show a positive relationship between profitability and the level of environmental disclosure; Gray, Owen, and Maunders (1987) point out that organizations with greater profitability tend to disclose higher levels of social and environmental information voluntarily.
Ahmadi and Bouri (2017)  The relationship between leverage and the degree of carbon footprint reporting is presumed to be a determining factor in greater environmental reporting because, as companies require more financing, investors demand that they be kept more informed of operations, including performance and environmental information (Andrikopoulos & Kriklani, 2013). In addition, it has been suggested that companies with higher leverage are more likely to increase disclosure volume to lower their agency costs (Ho & Taylor, 2007).
Although no conclusive evidence has been found indicating any consensus regarding the relationship between both variables (Akbas, 2014), there are specific cases such as those of Hibbit (2003) and Orij (2007), which find a positive relationship between the disclosure of social-environmental responsibility and leverage.
Following the empirical evidence, the hypothesis of the relationship mentioned above, for this study, is expressed as follows: H3: More leveraged companies are more likely to report a  (Stanny, 2013).
The determinants of the quality of the information have also been studied (something similar to what was tested in this study with the disclosure indicator). These studies observed that high quality reporting is primarily associated with the largest companies and their membership as well as industries related to publicly known environmental impacts (Brammer & Pavelin, 2008). In this sense, the following hypothesis is raised: H4: Companies are more likely to report a greater carbon footprint (1, 2 and 3) if they have disclosed it in other types of media. Gómez and Aleixandre (2014) considered the calculation and disclosure of the carbon footprint to be a behavior of contemporary companies as well as the result of process and management innovations. They considered age to be a factor of business innovation and hypothesized that younger companies are more likely to internalize such innovations. More specific studies have been carried out on this subject, regarding the age of companies and their degree of disclosure (Bhattacharyya, 2014;Akbas, 2014), but their conclusions have not been significant. In this paper, the relationship between these variables is again tested for the case of Spain, proposing the hypothesis described below: H5: Younger companies tend to report a greater reach (1, 2 and 3) of their carbon footprint.
A direct and statistically significant relationship has been found in most cases. The rationale underlying this type of relationship suggests the largest companies attract more attention and, therefore, suffer greater pressure to be consistent with what is expected be of them (Amran et al., 2014). With this evidence, the hypothesis presented is as follows: Given the dichotomous nature of the model-dependent variable, a logit econometric specification was used, which allows the relationship between this type of variable to be analyzed (Gujarati & Porter, 2009). The econometric specification was raised as described in equation 2: logit(Y) = In = α + β 1 X 1 + β 2 X 2 + β 3 X 3 + β 4 X 4 + β 5 X 5 + β 6 X 6 (2) Therefore, where π is the probability that companies will calculate their carbon footprint in a larger range (1, 2 and 3), α is the Y-intercept, β are the coefficients of the regression, and X are the predictors, represented by the independent variables.
In the first-instance analysis of the descriptive statistics ( As an independent variable for the economic model, an index of environmental performance was created (Exhibition 1), which also represents the previous disclosures of the organizations.
The collection of the different levels of diffusion and visibility in terms of the environmental behavior of the companies was based on a search for related information on their websites. The index gives the highest score in the scale to companies that have reported their environmental behavior in an annual sustainability report, which represents the greater disclosure effort it implies with respect to less complex dissemination channels (articles, news, infographics, etc.   From the analysis of the signs of the significant correlation coefficients, it is also deduced that the probability that Spanish companies will register a calculation with a greater scope of their carbon footprint (1, 2 and 3) in the National Registry of Carbon Footprint is favorably affected by its level of leverage (RPFP) and by its transparency with the community, expressed in the disclosure index of environmental behavior; this probability is negatively affected by age, that is, it is the youngest companies that register the greatest scope of their carbon footprint.

DISCUSSION
The hypotheses proposed were partially accepted. There was not enough evidence to accept the H1, H2, and H6. Only H3 (leverage) was accepted with a 5% significance, while H4 and H5 were accepted with a 10% significance.
The inability to accept the first hypothesis implies that in the Spanish Carbon Footprint Registry, the empirical relationship found by other authors is not met (Bhattacharyya, 2014;Akbas, 2014;Tagesson et al., 2009;Burgwal & Vieira, 2014). These authors find that there is a greater propensity by companies in sensitive sectors (highly polluting) to deploy greater efforts to publicize their environmental behavior, especially because their interest groups include institutional funders.
On the other hand, despite having a direct relationship with the dependent variable as established in H2, financial profitability (measured by the ROE) was not statistically significant. This confirms, for the Spanish case, the findings of similar studies for other countries (Andrikopoulos & Kriklani, 2013;Burgwal & Vieira, 2014), in which the evidence for accepting the hypothesis of the relationship between the profitability of firms and their degree of environmental disclosure was also not demonstrated.
H3, which shows the relationship between the degree of disclosure of the carbon footprint and the leverage index, was accepted with a 5% significance, according to the results of the estimation. Hibbit (2003) and Orij (2007) found similar results when relating the disclosure of social-environmental responsibility and the degree of leverage of the firms. In this case, there is no additional information to attribute with certainty the causes of this correlation; however, in accordance with the related literature, it could be associated with the practice of certain highly leveraged companies of preparing reports on operations and social responsibility in order to keep their creditors informed and reduce agency costs. Hahn, Reimsbach, and Schiemann (2015), however, report that most of the studies reviewed in their research did not obtain evidence of the impact of leverage.
In relation to H4, which associates the degree of prior disclosure of the environmental behavior of companies with their efforts to calculate the carbon footprint, a direct relationship was found, although to be considered significant, its level of significance should be lowered to 10%. Following this reasoning, the tradition of companies with greater transparency in their environmental behavior would explain their inclination to record a calculation of carbon footprint with a greater scope.
H5 of the study (accepted with a 10% significance) suggests that younger companies are prone to report a greater scope of carbon footprint, compared to the oldest companies.
This relationship could be explained by the recent validity of the environmental concern, which has not yet been echoed by the most traditional companies due the voluntary nature of the carbon footprint record. This logic would imply that, in order to achieve a greater commitment by more traditional companies to the official carbon footprint registration, the induction of motivations additional to those currently in existence is required.
Finally, H6, which posited a direct correlation between the carbon footprint record and the size of the firm, could not be accepted as the degree of association of the variables was not statistically significant. Although the evidence suggests that larger companies attract more attention and, therefore, are more pressured to be consistent with what is expected of them at the environmental level (Amran et al., 2014;Hahn et al., 2015), for the Spanish case, this relationship is not fulfilled according to our data sample. The logit estimation allowed the identification of a positive correlation among the degree of carbon footprint registration with profitability, leverage, previous disclosures, and size of the firms, while a negative relationship was identified with the manufacturing sector and the age of the companies. Nevertheless, based on these relationships, only the relationships of the scope of the footprint with the leverage, index of disclosure, and age were significant.

CONCLUSIONS
The results are consistent with previous studies (Ho & Taylor, 2007;Andrikopoulos & Kriklani, 2013;Akbas, 2014), which found a positive association (although in different proportions) between leverage and the degree of disclosure of the companies. On the other hand, the hypothetical relationship suggested by Gómez and Aleixandre (2014), in which younger companies are more prone to adopt process innovations (in reporting, in this case), is confirmed.
The strongest and most evident relationship was found between the disclosure index and the scope of the registry, which is surely associated with the theoretical propensity of companies to maintain a culture of disclosure over time (Stanny, 2013).
In all, our study is a relevant contribution for different stakeholders. On the one hand, legislators from other countries, taking the Spanish case as a reference, may consider the convenience of carrying out similar initiatives. Moreover, this type of research can assist in raising the degree of knowledge about this tool in the fight against climate change, so that more and more companies adhere to the Registry. On the other hand, the scientific community could explore whether similar initiatives that are carried out in other countries or regions (e.g., in autonomous communities of Spain such as Andalusia, Murcia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country) have a greater or lesser impact.
One limitation of our study lies in the limited sample size that, while sufficient for the application of the applied methodological technique, discourages the generalization of results. Note, however, that the purpose of this study was only exploratory. Future researchers will no longer have problems of this type as the number of companies registered in the National Registry has grown almost tenfold in its first four years (CincoDías, 2018).

Registration in the Spanish National Carbon Footprint
Registry implies a commitment by companies to reduce their emissions. The reduction objectives that Spanish organizations have proposed in their plans are highly variable. They have a mean reduction goal of 6.7%, but they fall within a range between 0.01% to 40%. This last striking figure can be explained by the intention to acquire certificates that guarantee the origin of renewable energy in the purchase of electricity and by the forecast that there will be a change in technology that will create significant energy savings and a consequent decrease in emissions (MAGRAMA-Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, 2015). We hope that, in the near future, governments and regulatory agencies committed to the environment will define standards and policies that encourage and ensure the presentation of information to facilitate the adoption of measures that guarantee increased sustainable behavior. This will favor the possibility of carrying out more in-depth investigations on this subject, which is currently of great relevance and is the focus of global attention.
Our study on the initial registration of companies in this initiative opens up interesting avenues for future research.
New research that includes more years of information from the Registry, will be able to study whether there is a learning effect, i.e., mimetic isomorphism, and whether the types of emissions reported vary. This new research will also be able to assess the evolution in contamination by these companies.
It is very important, in this sense, to appeal to the ethics of organizations in order to avoid fraud, such as the recent case of Volkswagen, and to encourage mechanisms for external verification or assurance of achievements in sustainability (Zorio et al., 2013;Sierra-García et al., 2014. Similarly, an approach based on the decision-making process from within organizations (as suggested by Correa & Larrinaga, 2015) should help future research complement the vision obtained in their studies.