Search Results (397)

Corporate carbon information disclosure (CID) is gradually transitioning from being voluntary to mandatory, consistent with the global consensus on addressing climate change and achieving sustainable development. CID reflects corporate environmental performance and is a crucial source for the market to comprehend corporate environmental risks and assess their long-term value. However, corporate operations are often influenced by managers’ behavioral preferences when formulating disclosure strategies, as managerial cognitive vision and values directly affect strategic decisions. This study used a sample of Chinese A-share-listed companies for 2010 to 2023 to investigate the relationship between managerial myopia and CID. The findings indicate that managerial myopia significantly inhibits CID by reducing executive environmental awareness and corporate green innovation capabilities. A heterogeneity analysis shows that managerial myopia has a stronger inhibitory effect on CID in companies with weak governance structures and those that are not technology-intensive, providing valuable references for environmental performance and CID practice in emerging countries. Full article

With the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), identity management and trusted communication have become critical for system security and reliability. Continuous AI learning and large-scale device connectivity introduce challenges such as permission drift, cross-domain access, and fine-grained API calls. Traditional identity management often fails to balance privacy protection with efficiency, leading to risks of data leakage and misuse. To address these issues, this paper proposes a blockchain-based self-sovereign identity (SSI) management mechanism for AIoT. By integrating SSI with a zero-trust framework, it achieves decentralized identity storage and continuous verification, effectively preventing unauthorized access and misuse of identity data. The mechanism employs selective disclosure (SD) technology, allowing users to submit only necessary attributes, thereby ensuring user control over self-sovereign identity information and guaranteeing the privacy and integrity of undisclosed attributes. This significantly reduces verification overhead. Additionally, this paper designs a context-aware dynamic permission management that generates minimal permission sets in real time based on device requirements and environmental changes. Combined with the zero-trust principles of continuous verification and least privilege, it enhances secure interactions while maintaining flexibility. Performance experiments demonstrate that, compared with conventional approaches, the proposed zero-trust architecture-based SSI management mechanism better mitigates the risk of sensitive attribute leakage, improves identity verification efficiency under SD, and enhances the responsiveness of dynamic permission management, providing robust support for secure and efficient AIoT operations. Full article

Sectoral vulnerability to distinct crisis types in small, open, and geopolitically exposed markets—such as Jordan—remains insufficiently quantified, constraining targeted policy design and portfolio allocation. This study’s primary purpose is to establish a transparent, comparable metric of sector-level market resilience that reveals how crisis typology reorders vulnerabilities and shapes recovery speed. Applying this framework, we assess Jordan’s equity market across three archetypal episodes—the Global Financial Crisis, the Arab Spring, and COVID-19—to clarify how shock channels reconfigure sectoral risk. Using daily Amman Stock Exchange sector indices (2001–2025), we estimate $GARCH\left(\mathrm{1,1}\right)$ models for each sector–crisis window and summarize volatility dynamics by persistence $(\alpha +\beta )$, interpreted as an inverse proxy for resilience; complementary diagnostics include maximum drawdown and days-to-recovery, with nonparametric (Kruskal–Wallis) and rank-based (Spearman, Friedman) tests to evaluate within-crisis differences and cross-crisis reordering. Results show pronounced heterogeneity in every crisis and shifting sectoral rankings: financials—especially banking—display the highest persistence during the GFC; tourism and transportation dominate during COVID-19; and tourism/electric-related industries are most persistent around the Arab Spring. Meanwhile, food & beverages, pharmaceuticals/medical, and education recurrently exhibit lower persistence. Higher persistence aligns with slower post-shock normalization. We conclude that resilience is sector-specific and contingent on crisis characteristics, implying targeted policy and portfolio responses; regulators should prioritize liquidity backstops, timely disclosure, and contingency planning for fragile sectors, while investors can mitigate crisis risk via dynamic sector allocation and volatility-aware risk management in emerging markets. Full article

As governments increasingly explore digital financial instruments to diversify funding channels and expand citizen participation, Thailand’s G-Token represents an early attempt to integrate blockchain technology into sovereign debt issuance. This study examines its potential implications through a multi-dimensional risk and governance framework, situating the analysis within both domestic regulatory structures and international benchmarks. The evaluation considers macroeconomic effects—such as potential shifts in monetary policy transmission, bank disintermediation risks, and systemic liquidity impacts—alongside micro-level concerns involving investor protection, market integrity, and financial literacy. Using comparative analysis with the European Union, Singapore, and United States regulatory approaches, the paper identifies critical gaps in legal classification, oversight maturity, and structural safeguards. Findings indicate that while Thailand’s design—particularly its separation from payment systems—supports monetary coherence, its ad hoc legal integration, reliance on administrative investor protections, and early-stage market infrastructure pose vulnerabilities if adoption scales. The study concludes that achieving long-term viability will require explicit statutory authorization, enhanced disclosure and governance standards, strengthened interagency oversight, and inclusive market access strategies. These insights provide a structured basis for emerging economies seeking to adopt government-backed tokenized instruments without undermining financial stability or public trust. Full article

The expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) networks has enabled real-time data collection and automation across smart cities, healthcare, and agriculture, delivering greater convenience and efficiency; however, exposure to diverse threats has also increased. Machine learning-based Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) provide an effective means of defense, yet they require large volumes of data, and the use of raw IoT network data containing sensitive information introduces new privacy risks. This study proposes a novel privacy-preserving synthetic data generation model based on a tabular diffusion framework that incorporates Differential Privacy (DP). Among the three diffusion models (TabDDPM, TabSyn, and TabDiff), TabDiff with Utility-Preserving DP (UP-DP) achieved the best Synthetic Data Vault (SDV) Fidelity (0.98) and higher values on multiple statistical metrics, indicating improved utility. Furthermore, by employing the DisclosureProtection and attribute inference to infer and compare sensitive attributes on both real and synthetic datasets, we show that the proposed approach reduces privacy risk of the synthetic data. Additionally, a Membership Inference Attack (MIA) was also used for demonstration on models trained with both real and synthetic data. This approach decreases the risk of leaking patterns related to sensitive information, thereby enabling secure dataset sharing and analysis. Full article

This study investigates whether the presence of an ESG committee in promoting sustainable practices is symbolic or substantive to creditors when setting costs. With unbalanced panel data, the study used 1518 company-year observations from non-financial firms listed on the IDX period 2018 to 2023. The hypothesis testing of this study was conducted by using moderated regression analysis (MRA). Hypothesis testing using a fixed effects model indicates that ESG disclosure can significantly lower the cost of debt. The role of the ESG committee is to act as a quasi-moderator for the relationship between ESG disclosure and the cost of debt. While the presence of an ESG committee can significantly reduce the cost of debt, the committee itself weakens the relationship between ESG disclosure and the cost of debt. Therefore, these findings suggest that the role of the ESG committee in promoting ESG disclosure to creditors in determining the cost of debt is becoming more substantive, moving away from a merely symbolic role that focuses on maintaining the company’s reputation and strengthening substantive management to control governance risk. The results of this study are expected to contribute to formulating policies that strengthen the role of ESG committees in improving corporate governance and sustainability practices by providing stakeholders with important and relevant ESG disclosure information for investment and funding decisions. Full article

As a vital driver of supply chain management, data has evolved into both a foundational resource and a critical production factor for optimizing supply chains and mitigating risk. This study adopts a four-dimensional framework (i.e., visibility, coordination, flexibility, and redundancy) to investigate how data asset information disclosure (DAID) shapes supply chain risk (SCR). Relative to the existing literature, this paper contributes by examining the determinants of supply chain risk from the perspective of data asset information disclosure and by conducting empirical analyses using double debiased machine learning and causal mediation analysis. The results show that DAID significantly lowers SCR, with results robust to multiple sensitivity checks. Economically, a one-standard-deviation increase in DAID leads to an average decline in SCR of 0.63%. Causal mediation analysis, aligned with the theoretical dimensions, reveals that DAID mitigates SCR through four channels: enhancing information transparency, improving visibility, strengthening agile responsiveness, and increasing supply chain concentration. Heterogeneity tests reveal stronger effects among firms facing fewer financing constraints, operating in more marketized environments, and designated as chain master firms. Further evidence suggests that reduced SCR promotes a greater capacity for coordinated innovation within the supply chain. Full article

The new financial standards, IFRS S1 and S2, have not only modified the way financial reporting is presented to diverse stakeholders but have also increased uncertainty. These changes make traditional valuation methods inadequate. This article proposes the development of a valuation framework using Real Options Valuation (ROV), which incorporates the disclosures required by S1 and S2 as inputs to the valuation model. The framework proposes a quarterly decision rule for deferring investments, parameters aligned with the new sustainability disclosures, and notes in the financial statements proposed as voluntary reporting. The results show that, under regulatory uncertainty and its associated implications, the deferral option is a more effective technique than the Net Present Value method. For professionals responsible for the valuation process, the proposed model serves as a practical guide for applying the ROV within the capital budgeting process. For investors, it provides an additional element of transparency through disclosure and alignment with other existing accounting standards. This work lays the groundwork for future empirical applications as companies adapt to the implementation of new accounting standards and their associated reporting. Full article

Background: This study examines how diversifying committees influence corporate investment risk practices, specifically in decision-making and resource allocation strategies. Previously, board diversity was commonly used in studies, but committee diversity was often overlooked, even though committees are delegated with providing recommendations for board decisions. Methods: Using information on committee presence, size, gender representation, and independent and non-executive members, we build a detailed diversity composite index. We capture this information from various sources such as corporate official disclosures, corporate websites, and other relevant disclosures. We combine this data with financial and investment information collected through secondary data, including Bloomberg and Refinitiv databases about companies listed on the ASX 300 in the Australian equity market from 2018 to 2020. Results: Our findings show that diversity plays a much more critical role in enhancing long-term strategic investment decisions than in driving short-term operational gains. Conclusions: Additional investigations have shown that increased diversity enhances corporate resource allocation, generating optimal investment and investment efficiency levels. These findings highlight the strategic importance of diversity as a contributor to good governance and better financial performance. Full article

The textual analysis of Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) reveals valuable insights into corporate operational performance and future risks. However, techniques for accurately extracting sentiment from unstructured Chinese MD&A texts still lack comprehensiveness. Existing studies related to sentiment analysis often use lexicon-based methods, which rely on predefined, context-agnostic word lists and accurate Chinese word segmentation and struggle with domain-specific terminology, leading to limited accuracy and interpretability. Although research has attempted to develop context-aware lexicons and language models, these methods still face limitations when applied to long and complex financial texts. To address the limitations, we propose MDARisk, a novel framework for corporate misconduct prediction. The core of MDARisk is a MultiSenti module, which leverages a multi-agent LLM approach to extract comprehensive and contextual sentiment from MD&A. Unlike lexicon methods, our LLM-based module interprets words based on their surrounding semantic context, allowing it to decipher nuanced expressions and specialized financial language. We first conduct an econometric validation using fixed-effects logit models to test whether the MultiSenti-derived MD&A sentiment is significantly associated with subsequent corporate misconduct. We then evaluate out-of-sample predictive utility by adding this sentiment feature to multiple classifiers and assessing its incremental gains over the baseline model. Empirical results demonstrate that our approach provides a more reliable sentiment-based indicator for misconduct risk, achieves higher predictive accuracy, and outperforms the traditional financial sentiment analysis approach. Our MDARisk framework provides a cost-efficient approach for automated disclosure screening, benefiting auditors, regulators, and investors in assessing potential misconduct risks. Full article

The disclosure of value chains—particularly supply chains—in the European Union (EU) banking sector represents an emerging area of sustainability research. Triggered by the 2024 enforcement of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRSs), EU-listed banks are now required to report on value chain impacts as part of their sustainability disclosures. This regulatory shift has positioned value chain transparency as a key element in double materiality assessments. This study explores the data-driven potential within commercial banks’ supply chains, focusing on the Polish financial sector as a case study. The methodology combines a literature review with a case study analysis supported by a comparative analysis using the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Materiality Navigator tool. The findings indicate that banks currently do not consider upstream supply chain issues—such as data security, privacy, or systemic risk—as material, despite their relevance. However, by extending materiality considerations to upstream processes, the analysis uncovers significant data-driven opportunities related to supply chain transparency. This research contributes early empirical insights into how banks might develop value chain disclosures to understand accountability and data-driven potential better, offering implications for both academic inquiry and practice. Full article

The healthiness of food can become a weakness of food delivery app services. Hence, this research aims to examine the relationships among health risk, fatigue, loyalty, nutrition disclosure, and chatbot information in the context of food delivery apps. In particular, this study investigates the moderating roles of nutrition disclosure and chatbot information on the effect of health risk on fatigue, using information overload as the theoretical underpinning. Data were collected through an online survey on the Clickworker platform, with 364 valid responses from consumers in the U.S. market. This study employed Hayes’s PROCESS Macro Model 7 to test the research hypotheses. The results indicate that loyalty is significantly affected by both health risk and fatigue. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate significant moderating effects of nutrition disclosure and chatbot information on the relationship between health risk and fatigue. This study contributes to the literature by elucidating the associations among the five constructs and additionally provides important managerial implications. Full article

The current study examined the impression management gap between sustainability and management reports, which in this study serves as a proxy for greenwashing in sustainability reporting. The study sample comprised 192 reports from 24 companies, covering the period 2020–2023. Impression management gaps were estimated across four dimensions—tone, analytical thinking, authenticity, and clout—using textual analysis with the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software. Our findings reveal significant impression management gaps for tone, clout, and analytics dimensions throughout the entire research sample, confirming a more pronounced use of impression management techniques in sustainability reporting. Despite increasing regulatory pressure during the study period, the calculated gaps did not show signs of decreasing. The results further indicate a high likelihood of greenwashing in the Services and Manufacturing sectors, and a lower likelihood in the Utilities sector. Such gaps risk misleading stakeholders by shaping perceptions that diverge from a company’s actual sustainability practices. Our findings suggest that greenwashing can be effectively detected through textual analysis of disclosures, particularly when conducting comparative studies between different reports. Building on these results, we argue that targeted reporting standards, advanced assurance methodologies, and clearer boundaries for impression management are essential to curbing greenwashing and strengthening the integrity of sustainability communication. Full article

To enhance the safety risk management and control capabilities for TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) construction in hydraulic tunnels, this study conducts a correlation analysis and dynamic evolution study of safety risks. Data were collected through multiple channels, including a literature review, on-site records, and expert interviews. Grounded theory was employed for three-level coding to initially identify risk factors, and gray relational analysis was used for indicator optimization, ultimately establishing a safety risk system comprising 5 categories and 21 indicators. A multi-level hierarchical structure of risk correlation was established using fuzzy DEMATEL and ISM, which was then mapped into a Bayesian network (BN). The degree of correlation was quantified based on probabilistic information, leading to the construction of a risk correlation analysis model based on fuzzy DEMATEL–ISM–BN. Furthermore, considering the risk correlations, a safety risk evolution model for TBM construction in hydraulic tunnels was developed based on system dynamics. The validity of the model was verified using the AY project as a case study. The results indicate that the safety risk correlation structure for TBM construction in hydraulic tunnels consists of 7 levels, with the closest correlation found between “inadequate management systems” and “failure to implement safety training and technical disclosure”. As the number of interacting risk factors increases, the trend of risk level evolution also rises, with the interrelations within the management subsystem being the key targets for prevention and control. The most sensitive factors within each subsystem were further identified as adverse geological conditions, improper construction parameter settings, inappropriate equipment selection and configuration, weak safety awareness, and inadequate management systems. The control measures proposed based on these findings can provide a basis for project risk prevention and control. The main limitations of this study are that some probability parameters rely on expert experience, which could be optimized in the future by incorporating more actual monitoring data. Additionally, the applicability of the established model under extreme geological conditions requires further verification. Full article

Background: Food-allergic reactions in restaurants often result from miscommunication between customers with allergies and staff, or from staff members’ insufficient knowledge of food allergies. This study examined the behaviors, attitudes, and risk perceptions of food-allergic consumers when dining out or ordering from foodservice establishments (FSEs) compared to consumers without food allergies. Methods: A representative pan-Canadian survey was conducted amongst three groups: one of individuals without food allergies (n = 500) and two of food-allergic individuals (allergic-convenience sample [n = 500] and allergic-general population [n = 500]). The convenience sample comprised members of Food Allergy Canada, a national patient advocacy organization. Some participants with food allergies had experienced reactions linked to an FSE (43% convenience, 27% general). Weighted responses from food-allergic groups were compared to those of non-allergic ones using chi-square (p < 0.05). Statistical comparison between allergic groups was not attempted due to inherent differences in their allergic condition. Results: In several questions, responses from the non-allergic group differed significantly from those of the allergic-convenience sample, but not from those of the allergic-general population. Food-allergic-convenience respondents were more likely to avoid ordering food or dining out than non-allergic ones, with the highest avoidance (66%) noted for third-party platforms. Cost was the main barrier for non-allergic and allergic-general populations, whereas the allergic-convenience sample prioritized allergy-related concerns. Although at a lower rate than for participants with food allergies, food allergies influenced restaurant selection for 44% of participants without food allergies when dining with individuals outside their household. Most allergic respondents perceived that FSEs underestimate the seriousness of food allergies (82% convenience, 71% general), yet they felt safe while dining out (60% convenience, 85% general), pointing at loyalty to specific FSEs as a risk mitigation strategy. Conclusions: This study highlights a potentially higher burden of disease (psychological and social strain, reduced quality of life) among a subgroup of the food-allergic population (convenience sample), as reflected in their behaviors, attitudes, and risk perceptions towards meals prepared in FSEs. Nevertheless, both allergic groups expressed shared concerns and needs related to safety (e.g., ingredient disclosure for all menu items, prevention of allergen cross-contact, ability of an FSE to offer a safe meal, establishing clear communication processes for allergy-related information), which FSEs and regulators should consider when designing risk management strategies. Full article