Changes in the climate-related disclosure of German listed companies during the first years of the new reporting standard

The relevance of climate or environment-related reporting has been increasing over the years. Since 2017, the Non-Financial Statement (NFS) has been part of the German reporting of listed companies. In this context, this academic paper examines the development of climate-related disclosure within the NFS. The research design involves a developed disclosure index concerning climate-related reporting within the NFS and a t-Test with dependent variables. The descriptive content analysis is the basis of the study to obtain the input data for the t-Test. The study is based on the NFS of the German Share Index, Mid-Cap-DAX, and Small-Cap-DAX companies. The financial years of the companies are the basis of the observation period 2018-2020. Companies whose financial year differs from the calendar year are also part of the sample. The analysis results show an improvement in climate-related reporting in the NFS across the three periods under review. The length of the NFS increased over the three observation periods. It is possible to deduce that the amount of climate-related topics disclosed in the NFS also increased. Furthermore, the number of disclosed environmental goals increased in the observation periods. This also indicates that companies put climate-related topics more on their reporting over the observation period. It is possible to conclude that the relevance of climate-related reporting has increased over the last three years and may increase in the future.