Floodlight or Spotlight? Public Attention and the Selective Disclosure of Environmental Information
研究了公众关注如何影响企业选择性披露环境信息，发现企业会利用公众关注披露更多指标但不增加环境损害信息，即“战略填充”策略。
Abstract To meet growing demands for information on their environmental impacts, firms may engage in selective disclosure by strategically reporting only a subset of relevant data. In this article, we draw out and problematize an antecedent to selective disclosure, public attention . Prior studies suggest that public attention brings scrutiny that reduces selective disclosure by increasing the risk of getting caught ( the floodlight thesis ). The impression management literature, however, suggests that public attention offers the possibility of broad‐based image benefits from the disclosure of strategically filtered data ( the spotlight thesis ). Panel regressions with Trucost data from 2008–19 provide overall support for the spotlight thesis as well as a negative moderator, environmental damage. Results also point to an underlying mechanism: Companies receiving public attention disclose a larger number of environmental metrics, but not ones that, altogether, represent more environmental damage, a tactic that we call strategic fluffing .