Readability of CEO letters: An analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility reporting in the oil and gas sector

Abstract

The oil and gas sector is an environmentally sensitive (Hackston & Milne, 1996; Reverte, 2009) and controversial industry (Du & Vieira, 2012) and with important impacts on sustainable development (Doni et al., 2022). Recent years have seen an increase in the number of companies disclosing CSR information. This increase has not been accompanied by an increase in quality and transparency. CSR communications present a low level of readability (Adhariani & du Toit, 2020; Smeuninx et al., 2020). Reading ease manipulation of CSR communication is an IM technique for companies to create a desired image, obfuscate inferior information, and conceal environmental and social damage caused (Adhariani & du Toit, 2020; Mnif & Kchaou, 2021; Nazari et al., 2017; Nilipour et al., 2020; Smeuninx et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2018).