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Local governments (LGs) play a crucial role as policymakers and catalysts for change at the local level, making them well-positioned to connect the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda goals with local communities. Therefore, LGs should collect and analyze data to monitor progress toward the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and report on the outcomes. In this regard, webpages on the internet stand out as a valuable tool to enhance accountability in LGs and to promote stakeholder engagement with the community. Thus, this paper aims to analyze whether Portuguese municipalities disclose information regarding the SDGs on their websites, and to identify the main drivers of SDG web-reporting.

Drawing on the theoretical foundation of legitimacy theory, this study examines the relationship between SDG reporting and the characteristics of several municipalities (such as geographical location, municipality size, financial performance, political ideology and gender), as well as adherence to some programs/networks/platforms (such as CESOP_Local and ODSLocal). The websites of 306 Portuguese municipalities were analyzed using the content analysis technique. A bivariate and multivariate statistical analysis was applied.

Bivariate analysis shows that coastal, larger and financially efficient municipalities are more likely to disclose SDG information on their websites due to visibility and stakeholder pressure. Contrary to extant literature, left-wing municipalities are not necessarily more inclined to embrace the 2030 Agenda. However, the presence of women in decision-making bodies and adherence to networks and sustainable programs positively influence SDG disclosure. In multivariate analysis, logistic regression identifies two significant factors impacting online SDG disclosure: the representation of women in municipal plenaries; and adherence to the CESOP_local network. Other factors show no significant influence, highlighting these two variables as the main drivers for SDG information disclosure.

The findings are in line with the literature review and lead us to conclude that SDG reporting in LGs is still in its infancy. Therefore, policymakers and regulators need to work together to implement and standardize sustainability reporting within LGs.

Considering the significance of the gender variable, the findings could have implications for policy formulation, promoting gender diversity and its impact on the quality of SDG reporting.

Empirical research on SDG reporting remains limited, particularly within the context of LGs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have delved into the reporting of SDGs specifically in this Portuguese context.

Some studies investigate the determinants of sustainability/integrated reporting in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). However, empirical research is still very embryonic in the scope of sustainable development goals (SDGs). As far as the authors are aware, previous research related to reporting in HEIs has not considered the linkage with the SDGs. Thus, this paper aims to analyse the disclosure on the websites of the Portuguese HEIs regarding the SDGs and their determinant factors.

This study is based on content analysis of the information disclosed on the websites of all Portuguese HEIs. Through bivariate and multivariate statistics analysis, the authors also aim to identify the explanatory factors for the SDGs reporting (such as geographical location – coast/inland, HEIs’ size, educational system – Universities and polytechnics, institutional status – public and private).

The results indicate that 63.6% of Portuguese HEIs disclose information on SDGs in their websites. Findings of bivariate analysis revealed that public and larger HEIs are those that disclose more information about SDG on their websites. However, the logit regression result found that size is the only determinant factor of SDGs reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first Portuguese approach to SDGs reporting in the Portuguese higher education sector. The results will be of interest to policymakers and regulators who decide to implement and standardize SDGs reporting at higher education, as well as of HEIs’ managers who wish to follow these new trends in their reporting cycle.

The implementation and reporting of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is one of the emerging challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs), but the lack of well-defined reporting structures and topics for this sector makes it difficult to map and evaluate HEI performance in relation to 2030 Agenda. This study aims to assess the SDG performance and reporting by the 13 HEIs that integrate the Times Higher Education Impact Ranking (THE_IR), from the perspective of the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda in the Portuguese context, where research on this topic is quite scarce.

Considering the THE_IR methodology, an SDG reporting assessment framework with 85 key topics has been developed to search for in the institutional reports of the 13 studied HEIs. For each topic, depending on the number of institutions that disclose it, a reporting index (RI) has been calculated, which was used to compare the level of reporting between the different SDGs and pillars.

Concerning HEIs’ SDG performance in the THE_IR, the People pillar was the one with the most HEIs ranked, followed by the Prosperity pillar. The Planet pillar was less highlighted. SDG reporting varied widely among Portuguese HEIs. The SDG RI presented a mean value of 43.1%. The Kruskal–Wallis test revealed that the RI for the Planet pillar (RI = 23.6%) was statistically and significantly lower than those for the People and Prosperity pillars (RI = 48.6% and 53.5%, respectively). The results thus demonstrated some conformity of the SDG reporting with Portuguese HEI performance in THE_IR. Aside from Goal 5, the SDGs 4 and 3 stood out in the first four positions of the HEIs in the THE_IR. Goals 3 and 4 were also the most disclosed in institutional reports.

This study proposed and applied a new SDG reporting assessment framework for HEIs, contributing to better evaluation of the inclusion of important SDG-related topics in their institutional reports.

The purpose of this paper is to present the different possibilities set out in the literature for the integration of environmental issues into the balanced scorecard (BSC), not only in the private sector but also in the public sector, emphasizing the need to adapt the original model of the BSC to public entities.

Literature review, both theoretical and empirical.

As in the private sector, the literature is not unanimous regarding the integration of environmental indicators into an independent perspective. The implementation of Kaplan and Norton’s model in the public sector, taking into consideration the environmental variable, requires double attention: on the one hand, because it is necessary to adapt it to the specificities of public entities, and on the other hand, because its environmental aim is different from and wider than that of the private sector

This study adds to the international research on environmental management by providing the state of the art of the integration of environmental issues into the BSC, particularly in the public sector, where literature review and empirical evidence is still relatively limited.

This study aims to analyse the extent of online social responsibility (SR) information disclosure by Portuguese municipalities and to identify related determinant factors, based on Institutional Theory and Legitimacy Theories.

A content analysis was performed on webpages from 60 sampled municipalities, and an information disclosure index was created.

Descriptive statistics obtained indicate the Total Disclosure Index (TDI) value was 0.46. The Economic Information sub-category exhibits the highest value (0.66), followed by the Social and Environmental Information categories (0.61 and 0.36, respectively).

The multivariate analysis results indicate that LA21 implementation the existence of tax burdens, the characterisation of a municipality as urban and environmental/SR certification application positively influence SR information disclosure. TDI is negatively affected by the existence of an inactive population (i.e. by the percentage of individuals ≤19 and ≥65 years of age).

The purpose of this paper is to develop environmental accounting and reporting practices (EARPs) by Portuguese local entities and their determining factors.

Data were obtained through a postal survey. In order to measure the degree of development of environmental accounting and reporting practices index was developed, which reflects the extent to which a set of eight EARPs have been implemented by the 69 Portuguese local entities included in the sample. Three variables are considered in this study as possible factors that drive the development of environmental management practices (EMPs) by local entities, namely, size of entity, accounting framework, degree of development of EMPs.

Results indicate the degree of development of EARPs in Portuguese local entities is low. Additionally, accounting regulation and the degree of development of EMPs are explaining factors of the degree of development of environmental accounting practices in Portuguese local entities.

This study adds to the international research on environmental accounting in public sector by providing empirical data from a country, Portugal, where empirical evidence is still relatively limited.

In 2015, the United Nations approved the 2030 Agenda defining 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and 169 targets. Among those, the target 12.6 encourages companies to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle. Thus, the aim of this paper is to understand whether ISO certification is a determinant factor in SDGs reporting. Standalone non-financial reports of the largest Portuguese companies were collected from 2016 until 2020, obtaining a total of 119 reports from 41 companies: 27 (22.7%) of the reports corresponds to non-certified companies and 92 (77.3%) to certified ones. Through a content analysis of the non-financial reports, an SDG disclosure Index (SDG_IND) was developed, to measure the level of disclosure on SDG. A set of panel data based on a Tobit regression analysis was applied, in STATA software, using the total of observations during the period 2016–2020, to verify if the variable ISO certification explains the level of SDGs disclosure. Contrary to our expectation, we did not find significant differences between certified and non-certified companies concerning the SDG-related disclosure. As far as we are aware, previous research in SDG has not considered the linkage with ISO certification. This article aims to explore this gap by investigating differences between certified and non-certified companies, regarding SDG disclosure, as whether ISO certification is a determinant factor of such disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which Portuguese local entities have implemented a set of environmental accounting practices, and to analyse some potential determining factors of their use.

The data were collected by sending a postal questionnaire to a sample of medium‐sized and large city councils and the municipal companies belonging to those municipalities. Three variables were considered as possible factors that drive the development of environmental accounting practices in the local public sector.

The degree of development of environmental accounting practices in Portuguese local entities is low. Organisational size and the degree of development of environmental management practices are positively and statistically related to the level of development of environmental accounting practices. However, the findings suggest that the existence of compulsory environmental accounting standards is not positively associated with the development of environmental accounting practices by Portuguese local entities.

The study limits itself to Portugal and, therefore, its results could not be applicable in other settings.

Portugal is experiencing a phase of development of regulatory environmental disclosure requirements. Understanding the environmental accounting and reporting practices currently developed by Portuguese local entities, as well as their drivers, may help regulators to develop more suitable standards for the sector.

The majority of empirical studies on environmental accounting practices in public organisations are focused largely on an Anglo‐Saxon context. This paper attempts to address this gap in the literature by providing a snapshot of the environmental accounting practices developed by Portuguese local entities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the development of environmental management practices by Portuguese local entities and their determining factors.

The data were collected by sending a postal questionnaire. In order to measure the degree of development of environmental management practices, an index of environmental management practices (EMPI) was developed, which reflects the extent to which a set of 16 environmental management practices have been implemented by the entities included in the sample. In total, four variables are considered in this study as possible factors that drive the development of environmental management practices by local entities: type of entity; size; proactive environmental strategy; and Local Agenda 21.

Results indicate the degree of development of environmental management practices in Portuguese local entities is low. Additionally, entity size, the adoption of proactive environmental strategies and the implementation of Local Agenda 21 are explaining factors of the degree of development of such practices.

The paper adds to the international research on environmental management in the public sector by providing empirical data from a country, Portugal, where empirical evidence is still relatively limited.