Misreporting of Mandatory ESG Disclosures: Evidence from Gender Pay Gap Information

We examine environmental, social, and governance (ESG) misreporting in the context of the UK government requirement to report gender employment ratios and pay gaps. Highlighting misreporting, many employers report a set of disclosures that are together mathematically impossible. Further, a disproportionate number of employers report perfectly balanced gender statistics, consistent with misreporting as a form of ESG-washing. Suggesting that a lack of ethical considerations encourages misreporting, employers involved in ESG controversies and who commit labor violations are more likely to misreport. Suggesting that capital market and media scrutiny discourage misreporting, employers that are the subject of an article about their gender pay gap reports and employers that receive an ESG audit or financial audit from a Big 4 auditor are less likely to misreport. Overall, our results suggest that 12%–15% of employers misreport in 2017 and 8%–11% misreport in subsequent years. Our findings highlight the importance of meaningful oversight within the context of ESG reporting.

This paper was accepted by Ranjani Krishnan, accounting.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05125.