Sustainability disclosure for container shipping: A text-mining approach

Abstract

Due to the increasing focus on green consumerism, sustainability disclosure—company informing its stakeholders of its involvement in sustainability—is an integral part of stakeholder management. Nevertheless, the sustainability reports published by container shipping companies exhibit unique structures and content. Existing sustainability disclosure frameworks are generic and do not cater to B2B industries, such as container shipping. Moreover, limited studies have been conducted to explore the sustainability disclosure framework of the container shipping industry. With a hierarchical unsupervised text-mining method, the latent information of major listed container shipping companies' sustainability reports has been explored. A unified framework is produced comprising three primary dimensions: employee training and management, sustainable business management, and sustainable shipping operation. Each primary dimension has three secondary sub-dimensions. Theoretically, this research uncovers themes and patterns on how container shipping companies disclose sustainability. Managerially, this research guides container shipping companies on preparing and organizing sustainability disclosure. For regulators, policymakers, and global investors, this research also provides implications on evaluating container shipping companies’ sustainability performance and serves as a benchmark against broader sustainability goals such as sustainable development goals (SDGs). © 2021 Elsevier Ltd